Feuding Gulf states that have pumped millions of dollars into public diplomacy appear to have done better in damaging the reputations of their detractors than in polishing their own tarnished images.

Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, all appear to fare poorly in how they are perceived, judged by a recent survey of American public opinion. The international community’s response to the two-month-old Gulf crisis suggests, however, that Qatar so far has been more successful in garnering muted support for its call for direct talks to solve the crisis – a position rejected by its detractors.

In the only survey to date of public perceptions in the United States of the Gulf crisis by Britain’s YouGov on behalf of Saudi Arabia’s foremost English-language daily, Arab News, Qatar faired poorest in its approval rating, but Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, the instigators of a diplomatic and economic boycott of the idiosyncratic Gulf state did not do much better.

Poll results showed that a mere 27 percent of the 2,263 people queried considered Qatar a friend or ally of the United States compared to Saudi Arabia with 37 and the UAE with 39 percent. Thirty-one percent identified Qatar as unfriendly or an enemy of the US. Only 16 percent of those polled associated Qatar with its hosting rights for the 2022 World Cup while 34 percent linked Qatar to being accused of supporting terrorism and 44 percent believed that Qatar’s state-owned, controversial Al Jazeera television network provided a platform for militant and jihadist groups.

Arab News reported extensively on the poll and included the full report in one of those stories. The report was also scheduled to be accessible on Monday on YouGov’s website.  The Arab News reporting was the latest salvo in a public relations war waged by state-owned or privately-owned media on both sides of the Gulf divide that operate in an environment of highly restricted freedom of the press and often have close ties to government and/or ruling families.

The Financial Times quoted Saudi journalists as saying that they had been pressured by government to criticise Qatar. One Saudi editor described to the FT how officials have been using a mobile phone messaging group to instruct journalists on how to shape coverage and what stories to focus on. “These are orders, not suggestions,” the editor said.

Focusing exclusively on the poll’s Qatar-related results, Arab News editor-in-chief Faisal J. Abbas expressed “surprise” at “how quickly the diplomatic row has negatively affected ‘Brand Qatar,’ at least in the US… It was interesting to see that despite the billions spent by Qatar on various soft power initiatives — from education to charity to international sport — the study found that more Americans associate it with supporting terror than anything else, “ Mr. Abbas wrote.

Mr. Abbas made no reference to the fact that like Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE have deployed huge sums to hire a battery of US public relations and lobbying firms in a bid to garner support for their positions. Nor did he discuss what return on investment they have had.

Striking a slightly more cautionary note in one of several commentaries on the YouGov poll published by Arab News, Sir John Jenkins, a former British ambassador to the kingdom, noted that “Saudi Arabia has ground to make up here, which is an important policy point for decision-makers in Riyadh: Reputation matters in the modern world and you do not improve that without a smart, targeted and sustained communications strategy.”

Last month, a random online YouGov poll suggested that of those asked whose side they were on in the Gulf crisis, 23 percent opted for Qatar and only nine percent for Saudi Arabia. Two thirds of the respondents said they did not know enough to choose sides.

The results of the survey of US public opinion, notwithstanding, Qatar appeared to be faring better than the poll results suggested. A majority of Arab and Muslim states have refrained from joining the UAE-Saudi-led campaign, which is backed by less than a score of African and Asian nations, who are dependent on the oil-rich Gulf states in financial and/or political terms.

The international community almost unanimously has refused to endorse the UAE-Saudi-led alliance’s conditions for resolving the Gulf crisis. The United States, the European Union, China and Russia have effectively backed Qatar’s call for direct talks between the Gulf states and its detractors, a proposal rejected by the alliance.

The alliance’s “problem with (their) display of political bravado is that nobody else buys it, and they are awkwardly isolated in their tent woven of threads of bravado. This is mainly because their accusations are wildly exaggerated, and also hypocritical on core complaints like funding Islamist movements, having relations with Iran, or interfering in other states’ affairs. The Saudi-Emirati media propaganda pushing such accusations has been embarrassing in its ultra-thin doses of truth, and wildly counter-productive, serving only to further damage the credibility that some GCC media did enjoy in recent years,” noted prominent journalist and pundit Rami G. Khouri.

Mr. Khouri argued further that “in the court of global public opinion, the Qataris appear to be much more sensible, consistent, focused, and precise, while the Saudi-Emirati-led states seem to express genuine anger and fear accompanied by unrealistic and unreasonable demands, but without convincing evidence for their accusations.”

The UAE-Saudi-led alliance has demanded that Qatar shutter Al Jazeera and other media outlets; reduce its relations with Iran with whom it shares the world’s largest gas field; expel Turkish troops from the emirate; and cut ties to militant and Islamist groups irrespective of whether they have been proscribed by the United Nations or the United States. Qatar has rejected the demands as an infringement on its sovereignty.

To many, the dispute in the Gulf amounts to the pot blaming the kettle and twisting the truth to serve rival narratives that fuel their public relations and media wars. Literally all parties to the dispute are suspected of having had, at least at some points in time, links to militant groups. All, apart from Saudi Arabia, maintain often flourishing economic relations with Iran and many have foreign military bases on their soil.

Said hard-hitting, investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald in an article detailing the Gulf rivals’ investment in Washington public relations and lobby firms some four years prior to the current Gulf crisis: “The point here is not that Qatar is innocent of supporting extremists… The point is that this coordinated media attack on Qatar – using highly paid former U.S. officials and their media allies – is simply a weapon used by the Emirates, Israel, the Saudis and others to advance their agendas… What’s misleading isn’t the claim that Qatar funds extremists but that they do so more than other U.S. allies in the region… Indeed, some of Qatar’s accusers here do the same to at least the same extent, and in the case of the Saudis, far more so.”

There is some truth that there is discrimination of the Madheshi, residents of the plains of Nepal, but the majority of hill indigenous and mountain people are comparatively more discriminated than the Madheshis. The discrimination of the Madheshis is not the voice of original residence of Terai, who have been there since centuries; it is an imported and guided agenda highlighted after the flow of immigrants in Nepal from India as result of an open border between these two countries.

The Rastriya Janata Party (RJP) Nepal, the leading Madhesh agitating party, is demanding, for a  long time, an amendment to the constitution of Nepal. Their major demands were proportionate representation, two provinces in Terai, citizenship and language, which must be incorporated in the amendment of constitution. They are opposing and threatening to boycott the forthcoming polls of 18 Sep 2017 if their demands were not met.

The majority of the Madhesh (Terai) people are fed up with the agitation and started to disobey anti-polls activities. They believe that Terai cannot gain political and economic prosperity without participating in the elections. The recent local bodies’ polls gave also some indications. Many Terai leaders, previously who were opposing the polls and supporting the agitations, have abandoned the agitating parties and participated in second phase of local polls of 28 June 2017. And some of them won the election. This has put the agitating Madhesh leaders in pressure of division if they did not participate in third phase of local government polls.

Owing to this reality, RJP is in dual mentality whether to participate or not in local level polls of province number two, to be held on 18 Sep 2017.

The Government of Nepal has succeeded holding local polls of six provinces in two phases in 14 May and in 28 June 2017. And in province number 2, polling date has been rescheduled for the fourth time to bring agitating Madhesi parties on board and will be held on third phase in 18 September 2017.

To fulfill some Madhesi demands, the present ruling coalition government of Nepali Congress supported by Communist Party of Nepal (Center) has tabled a bill for constitution amendment and the government has already decided to increase the number of local bodies in Terai. But, it became difficult to materialize as opposition Nepal Communist Party (Unified) is against constitution amendment citing it threat to the national unity and sovereignty. Without its support, it is difficult to get two third majority in the house to amend the constitution. And, the government’s decision to increase the numbers of local bodies in Terai, proportionate to the population has been halted by the order of the Supreme Court.

Other than RJP leaders from major political parties in Terai of Nepal have no objection with the constitution and the elections.

For time being, RJP has good support of India. People in Nepal are not happy with India as it is playing dual role to get support from both the sides, externally supporting local polls and internally encouraging polls boycott activities of agitating RJP leaders.

They are also not happy with its diplomatic stands as it is using Madhesi parties against Nepal constitution for its amendments in the name of inclusion. And, anti-India feeling is increasing in Nepal. For instance, the Nepal India border blockade by India in 2015 with support of RJP was counterproductive for it and thereafter majority people in Nepal started to undermine Indian authorities openly. Thereafter, Nepal inclined towards China and signed many agreements with it including transit transport between Nepal and China that deals with railway connectivity and trade and transit routes by the previous K. P. Oli led government.

The ruling coalition government in Nepal seems soft and liberal in fulfilling demands of the Madhesi leaders related to constitution amendments and increase numbers of local bodies in Terai. Moreover, frequent changes in the dates of local polls is also indication to attract Madhesis in the local polls.

After the third phase of local polls, only four months period would be left for preparations to hold the provincial and the parliamentary polls by 21 Jan 2018. When polls were possible to be held in province number one, five and seven in second phase, there was no reason to postpone the polls in province two; and there is also no guarantee that polls would be held in province number 2 even after four months of second phase polls. Because, the Madhesi leaders could change their stances any time regarding the polls.

Analysts suspect that this excessive gap between second and third phase of local polls could affect negatively to the provincial and federal parliament polls.

If the provincial and the parliament election were not held between 18 Sep 2017 and 21 January 2018, it means a constitution vacuum would be created automatically; or alternatively there could be amendment in the constitution to hold remaining elections beyond any date after 21 Jan 2018 by extending tenure of present parliament and its members. It means, the ruling coalition parties would get more time to conduct remaining polls and to lead the government for longer period. Some medias have already started to disseminate news, quoting various sources about high possibility of this parliament tenure extension by constitution amendment. If it happened, it would increase political transition period as well as uncertainty would remain in its constitution implementation

*Hari Prasad Shrestha, former Undersecretary, Nepal Government and was associated with UNDP Africa, is writer of novella – The Violent Nile.

The disagreement between US President Donald Trump and his main critics on Russia lingers on. In a July 31 MSNBC segment, former US Ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul said that Trump was tame in his reply to the Russian government measures taken against US diplomatic interests in Russia. For McFaul, what earlier happened to Russian diplomatic staff in the US is apparently okay, unlike the Russian retaliation, which came months AFTER the US based Russian diplomatic personnel were penalized. McFaul misleadingly underscored that Trump’s playing nice with Putin hasn’t worked.

Actually, the tough talk and sanctions against Russia haven’t worked. Trump’s effort at improving relations with Russia has been greatly stonewalled. This surely isn’t an act on his part. In line with the predominating Capitol Hill and US mass media groupthink, it’d be politically convenient for him to fully acquiesce to their line – something he hasn’t done. Some related matters caught my eye.

CNN’s backpedal admission of a faulty story claiming an Anthony Scaramucci-Russian connection might’ve played a role in Trump’s attraction to hire Scaramucci (who at times), can look effective in a sound bite moment. With some credence, Trump has been regularly blasting CNN – especially that network’s ongoing mantra about a possible Trump-Russia collusion. (Regarding CNN’s retraction, don’t get so giddy over the perception of ethics at that station. As an American establishment sort, Scaramucci has some clout if wronged. Think of the numerous unnamed sources with dubious claims used by CNN, along with some top heavy segments at that station – typical of what’s evident in dictatorial societies.)

Shortly after being appointed to a Trump administration position, the since fired Scaramucci stated that Trump might not sign the US Congressionally motivated bill to further sanction Russia, on the basis that it wasn’t harsh enough. Given Scaramucci’s exhibited tendency to pop off (when he reasonably shouldn’t), it’s quite possible that he made that remark without first consulting Trump. The US president is known to not like it when people under him get more media play and/or take action which he doesn’t agree with.

Scaramucci aside: within his administration, Trump has elements taking a more confrontational line on Russia than him. They include Vice President Mike Pence and UN Ambassador Nikki Haley. Pence serves as Trump’s outlet with establishment Republicans. Haley’s appointment has served to satisfy the Lindsey Graham/Marco Rubio/John McCain wing of the Republican Party. Concerning Russia, Secretary of Defense James Mattis and National Security Adviser HR McMaster seem like they’re closer to Haley and Pence than Trump. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson comes across as perhaps being comparatively closer to Trump.

Trump and Tillerson, have expressed a reluctance in going along with the increased sanctions against Russia, which is overwhelmingly supported by the mostly groupthink minded (on Russia) US Congress and Senate. Trump and Tillerson can make a strong case on why the sanctions are counterproductive. Specifically:

• the EU’s (notably Germany’s) negative reply to the advocated further sanctions
• Russia’s retaliatory response
• limits in persuading Russia to go against its reasonable interests.

When it comes to US mass media and body politic, the last particular is very much in the too hot to handle category. The present lack of a strongly detailed Trump rebuttal to the Congress and Senate is what led Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev to say that the US president has been too capitulationist. Medvedev also said that the Trump signed sanctions bill is an attempt to squeeze Russia out of foreign markets. (The bill seeks to penalize Western companies doing business in Russia.)

Within US mass media, there’ve been some second guessing of the Capitol Hill groupthink sanctions against Russia. David Ignatius’ August 3 Washington Post column expresses that view. Notwithstanding, Ignatius clings to the faulty belief in “Russia’s well-documented meddling in the 2016 presidential election.” I’d love to see him directly reply to the counterclaim on that opinion, which he presents as a clearly established fact.

The Tucker Carlson hosted Fox News show continues to provide some reasonably dissenting views. One such recent segment featured retired US Army Colonel Douglas Macgregor, who believes that Capitol Hill has been overly bellicose towards Russia. Mind you that Macgregor is no Russophile. He expressed doubt on whether the US and Russia can ever become allies and characterized the latter as a periodic 300 year menace to the West.

On this point, I expressed my disagreement to Macgregor (who I’ve had some prior limited discourse with) by noting that:

• The West hasn’t been so monolithic, in conjunction with Russia not being such a perennial threat.
• The US fought Germany in two world wars – not Russia.
• Russian behavior during America’s Revolution, War of 1812 and Civil War was more favorable to America than the British stance.
• Russia joined Britain, Prussia and Austria in opposing Napoleon.
• Russia had openly inquired about NATO membership upon the Soviet collapse.
• Russia was the first nation to console the US on 9/11, followed by Russian cooperation with the US in Afghanistan.

I haven’t gotten a reply back from him. In the aforementioned Fox News segment, Macgregor noted how some special interest groups get disproportionate influence in the US. Concerning that matter, I brought to his attention the Democratic National Committee-Kiev regime collusion and a July 31 pro-Polish/anti-Russian National Interest article, which is cherry picked history – contradicting the realist image of the venue where it appeared.

I’m of the belief that patriotically minded Russians should be able to acknowledge bad moments on Russia’s part relative to Poland and some others. Conversely, the same should hold true when it comes to the wrongs of others. While glorying Poland and bashing Russia, The National Interest article in question omits the following:

• 1919 – Under Josef Pilsudski, Poland seeks to take former Russian Empire territory, largely inhabited by non-Poles with ties to Russia. The Pilsudski led Poles reject a Russian White offer to combat the Reds, when the Bolsheviks were in a losing situation. The Russian Whites were willing to recognize a Polish state within Polish ethnic boundaries.
• 1920 -Thousands of Soviet POWs die under miserable conditions while in Polish captivity.
• 1934 – Polish-Nazi non-aggression pact, four years prior to the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact.
• 1938 – Polish, Nazi and Hungarian taking of CzechoSlovak territory, with the Soviet call for a joint Soviet-West (particularly French) counter support for CzechoSlovakia rebuffed.

According to German General Heinz Guderian and some other sources, the Soviets needed a break on their WW II westward offensive. After the Stalingrad battle, the Nazis were still a threat, as evidenced by the many casualties they were still able to inflict on the Red Army. The Polish Home Army didn’t initially seek to coordinate their uprising with the Red Army. That only came after the Nazi counterattack in Warsaw.

Under Stalin, the USSR had some especially brutal aspects. Nevertheless, equating the USSR with Nazi Germany is false. The former utilized a good number of Jews and Poles – something the latter wouldn’t tolerate. Between the two world wars, Poland left something to be desired on the subject of respecting non-Polish minorities.

One can also go back to the early 1600s Polish subjugation of Russia, as well as the close to 100,000 Poles who joined Napoleon in his attack on Russia.

*Michael Averko is a New York based independent foreign policy analyst and media critic. This article was initially placed at the Strategic Culture Foundation’s website on August 6.

By Patricio Giusto*

This article provides a general outlook on the current state and perspectives of the triangular relation between China, Latin America (LAC) and the United States (US), regarding a series of geopolitical and economic implications for LAC. In recent years, there has been a clear retreat of the U.S. from the LAC in terms of political and economic influence. This has triggered an academic debate about the possible consolidation of a new “triangle” in LAC, presumably dominated by China, the emerging superpower of the 21st century. The big question now is: Would this lead in short order to a new phase of mutually beneficial cooperation or, in contrast, to increasing tension between China and the U.S. in LAC?

China into the former “U.S. backyard”

LAC used to be considered the “backyard” of the United States as a result of the Monroe Doctrine, a U.S. foreign policy principle introduced in 1823 meant to protect the independence of all of the countries from the Americas and secure a relatively benign sphere of influence of the U.S. in the region. Within this framework, any European interference in domestic politics of the region would have been considered an act of aggression against the U.S.[i]

After the 2001 terrorist attacks, the United States’ interest in LAC started to decrease significantly. The successive U.S. administrations during the last 15 years shifted their military and economic focus to the Middle East and other regions of the world that became more strategically vital for U.S. national interests to be served. U.S. diplomatic attention, including its investment flows in LAC, have notably diminished; at the same time, China has increased its presence and attention.

As Evan Ellis, American military strategist and Latin American affairs expert, explains: “The rise of China as a global power, its potential role as a customer, investor, and loan provider, and the simultaneous economic stagnation and fiscal difficulties that the US finds itself in, has led many Latin American nations to view Washington as but one partner among many, and not necessarily the most attractive one.”[ii]

Kevin Gallagher, associate professor of international relations at Boston University, agrees with this opinion: “In the wake of the 9/11 attacks and after the global financial meltdown that originated in the United States, Washington turned to other shores. While the U.S. wasn’t paying attention, Latin America quickly became of the utmost importance for China”.[iii]

The Retreat of the U.S. from Latin America

For his part, Shoujun Cui, Chinese expert from the Center of Latin American Studies of Renmin University of China, considers that “at the outset of the twenty-first century, Latin America was refocused within China’s scope of interests following its ‘going out’ strategy at the time when the hegemonic dominance of the United States in LAC went into decline as U.S. foreign policy was dominated by the counterterrorist war primarily in the Middle East and, later on elsewhere, the country entered into a series of persistent financial crisis.”[iv]

China certainly took advantage of US neglect towards Western Hemisphere during George W. Bush and Barack Obama’s administrations. Latin America’s rich endowment of natural resources complemented China’s need to secure and diversify its energy and resources supply. In just a few years, China has become a central actor in the region’s foreign trade and investments flows. And this tendency is expected to deepen even more under Donald Trump’s term in office.

The failure of Washington Consensus policies must also be taken into account to explain the decline of the United States’ influence in LAC. The resulting crises paved the way for the wave of left-leaning governments with negative attitude towards the US that were elected in the region during the 2000s. “Left-leaning parties ascended to power in countries such as Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Ecuador, Peru, Paraguay, Venezuela, and Uruguay; many were largely anti-American in their approach,” recounts Shaheli Das, Indian researcher from the Center for East Asian Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University.[v]

In November 2013, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry claimed that the Monroe Doctrine was officially over and that the U.S. was trying to find new cooperation patterns with LAC.[vi] Over this period of U.S. retreat from LAC, China has kept its characteristic caution in its interactions with the region, devoid of any ideological or political connotations.

Until 2008, when the first policy paper for LAC was released, China hadn’t exposed a unified strategy for LAC and had focused on promoting comprehensive and strategic economic partnerships or FTA, via bilateral agreements. Likewise, China notably increased its participation in multilateral regional organizations, promoting a cooperative and non-confrontational relation with the US in the political and economic arenas.

Understanding the “China Triangle”

Scholars have long written about a triangular relation between China, LAC and the United States. This aspect has been largely debated, especially from the US side, where a “zero-sum” assessment on this issue prevails. Many consider that any progress of China in LAC will be at the expense of US interests and assets in the region.

The first to refer about the triangular relationship was Argentine political scientist Juan Gabriel Tokatlián. “It is probable that Latin America may have the best chance in decades to establish a positive triangular relationship with two major powers. A new linkage – interconnecting China, the United States, and Latin America – has a greater potential for success than its predecessors,” he projected in 2007.[vii] One year later, American researcher Barbara Stallins amplified the use of the concept.[viii] Since then, the term has been used in numerous relevant academic and journalistic works.

In one his several publications related to this topic, Kevin Gallagher affirms: “Any comprehensive strategy for inclusive and sustainable development for Latin America and its peoples will need to be constructive in terms of engagement with the two largest economies of the world, China and the United States. Latin America is increasingly strategic for China and will remain so for the United States.”[ix]

Regarding the new US stance in the region, Gallagher says that “now is a perfect time for the United States to hit the reset button on foreign economic policy in LAC-and for LAC to do the same toward the United States.”[x] He places financial cooperation as a field in which the US still has an important role to play in the region, nonetheless China’s increasing interest in that area. “While engaging with its newfound economic partner, LAC should not disengage with the United States,” he observes, considering trilateral cooperation not only possible but beneficial for all sides.[xi]

Looking to the future, Gallagher affirms that is up to Latin American countries to take advantage of this new scenario: “Unless there is a course correction in US policy, it looks like – for a little while at least – it will be up to Latin American governments themselves to carve out a more constructive relationship with a Chinese government that appears more than willing to fill the vacuum potentially left by the United States.”[xii]

Meanwhile, Evan Ellis provides a divergent viewpoint on this issue. He argues that the “triangle” concept is a simplification that brings difficulties and limitations for understanding the dynamics of China’s increasing engagement with LAC.[xiii] He points to three flaws: “The triangle masks other important actors that must be considered in the dynamic, it incorrectly encourages a view of LAC as a unitary actor and, at its core, the triangle is a subtly neocolonialist way of approaching LAC and its external relations.”[xiv]

With respect to the relation between China and the U.S. in LAC, Ellis considers that both superpowers have several realms to expand cooperation, like security and defense. But he warns: “If the global strategic competition between the United States and the PRC degenerates into a new geopolitical conflict, LAC will be one of the battlefields in which that competition plays out.”[xv]

“Cautious collaboration with the PRC may be the best option that the United States has to positively impact the rules of the game in which the PRC presence in LAC and the broader emerging global competition between the United States and the PRC play out,” recommends Ellis to U.S. policy makers.[xvi]

For his part, Rosendo Fraga, Argentine historian and Director of the Center of Studies “Nueva Mayoría,” says that “China assumes that LAC is a region of the world where the U.S. influence will remain relevant, but in LAC it may even increase its presence, as it took place in Africa, where the Chinese influence today competes with the American and the European.”[xvii]

Cooperation between China and the US must prevail

To conclude, I maintain that China and the US have much more to win than to lose by collaborating in the region. As LAC seems to have lost strategic importance for the US, China’s increasing influence is definitely good news in order to fill that gap and provide, principally, the financial resources the region need to continue developing its poor infrastructure and services.

Furthermore, China’s mega-market offers Latin American countries a great opportunity to diversify and add value to their exports basket, today composed mainly of raw materials. The next step should be to enter Chinese supermarkets with finished products of high added value. Chile, for instance, could be considered a pioneer in this sense. Again, this should be good news for the United States, as the region would continue to increase its demand of cutting-edge technology and support from US financial institutions.

At the same time, a more developed and economically diversified LAC will be probably become a more politically stable, secure and attractive destination for foreign investment. That would be highly beneficial, not only for the US but for the entire world. Thus, “zero-sum” viewpoints are, to say the least, very weak and pessimistic arguments to analyze the dynamic of the “triangle.” Usually, negative viewpoints ignore the real intentions and strategies of the actors involved, as well as the undeveloped potential of the relations.

As prominent strategist and former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger has remarked: “The U.S.-Chinese relationship should not be considered as a zero-sum game, nor can the emergence of a prosperous and powerful China be assumed in itself to be an American strategic defeat.”[xviii] I consider that the case of Latin America serves well to endorse this statement. It is clear that cooperation must prevail in China-U.S. relations regarding LAC.

*Patricio Giusto, Extramural Contributor at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs

Piece written by extramural contributor Patricio Giusto, Master of China Studies (Zhejiang University) and Master in Public Policies (Latin American Institute of Social Sciences). Bachelor in Political Sciences and regular professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina. Executive Director of Diagnóstico Político, political consultancy group based in Buenos Aires.

Notes:
[i] Bingham, Hiram (2011): “Latin America and the Monroe Doctrine”. Published by The Yale Review, p. 3.

[ii] Ellis, R. Evan (2016): “The strategic dimension of Chinese engagement in Latin America. Commercial activities in strategic sectors”. Published by Progressive Management Press, p. 72-73.

[iii] Gallagher, Kevin (2016): “The China Triangle: LAC’s China Boom and the Fate of the Washington Consensus”. Oxford University Press, p. 7.

[iv] Cui, Shoujun and Pérez García, Manuel (2016): “China and Latin America in transition: Policy dynamics, economic commitments and social impacts”. Published by Palgrave Macmillan Press, p. 1.

[v] Das, Shaheli (2016): “Is Latin America of strategic importance to China?”. Article published in The Diplomat magazine. Date: 13th December, 2016.

[vi] “Kerry makes it official: ‘Era of Monroe Doctrine is over’”. Article published by The Wall Street Journal. Date: 18th November, 2013.

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2013/11/18/kerry-makes-it-official-era-of-monroe-doctrine-is-over/

[vii] Tokatlián, Juan Gabriel (2007): “Latin America, China, and the United States: a hopeful triangle”. Article published by www.opendemocracy.net, p. 2.

[viii] Stallins, Barbara (2008): “The US-China-Latin America Triangle: Implications for the Future,” in China’s Expansion into the Western Hemisphere, Riordan Roett and Guadalupe Paz, eds. (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2008).

[ix] Gallagher, Kevin P. (2016), op. cit., p. 167.

[x] Ibid., p. 168.

[xi] Ibid., p. 191.

[xii] Gallagher, Kevin (2017): “Will China gain from a US withdrawal in Latin America?”. Article published by The Diplomat magazine. Date: 25th February, 2017.

http://thediplomat.com/2017/02/will-china-gain-from-a-us-withdrawal-in-latin-america/

[xiii] Ellis, R. Evan (2012): “The United States, Latin America and China: A ‘triangular relationship’?”. Working paper for Inter-American Dialogue organization, p. 7.

[xiv] Ellis, R. Evan (2016), op. cit., p. 428-429.

[xv] Ibid., p. 493.

[xvi] Ibid., p. 494.

[xvii] Personal interview conducted in the framework of the thesis “Xi Jinping’s political era in China: Implications and perspectives for the relation with Latin America”. Presented for the Master of China Studies at Zhejiang University in May, 2017.

[xviii] Kissinger, Henry (2012): “The future of U.S. – Chinese relations. Conflict is a choice, not a necessity”. Article published in Foreign Affairs magazine, March/April 2012 edition.

An in-depth analysis on how Islam arrived in three different regions of the Asian continent and is now perceived and lived by the local populations, with a common denominator being the purity of their belief and the strong identification they have towards Islam.

Part 1: Background

A law of physics states that the further you get away from the center of a given natural phenomenon of physics, the lesser the intensity. Indeed, physics is defined as:  “The branch of science concerned with the nature and properties of matter and energy.”

However, Wikipedia gives a more thorough and precise definition to this important branch of science:
“Physics (from Greek φυσική (ἐπιστήμη),) i.e. “knowledge, science of nature”, from φύσις, physis, i.e. “nature” is a part of natural philosophy and a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through space and time, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.”i

If a given spot is hit by an earthquake of a given intensity, the tremor’s force will be higher in the center than in the periphery because force and its energy will dwindle as it moves further away from the point of impact.

For faith, in general, the effect is reverse, the further one moves from the center, the stronger and purer it gets. Indeed, in Christianity the further one moved from the Vatican, in Rome, the more devout the people are, as is the case in Latin America and in the Philippines. This concept also applies to Islam, and thus the people of Pakistan, Malaysia and Indonesia are definitely very devout and pious in their Islam day in and day out, as a result.

In the following paper I will attempt to look at how Islam arrived in three different regions of the Asian continent: South Asia in the case of Pakistan, Central Asia represented by Uzbekistan and South East Asia symbolized by Malaysia and Indonesia, and settled down with time and how it is perceived and lived by the local population. A common denominator of these countries is the purity of their belief, meaning the strong identification they have towards the pure Islam.

Unfortunately this concept is expressed in Pakistan by a certain amount of violence towards the other. The other here, meaning anyone not Sunni. Thus, the Shiite and the Christians have been unduly victimized by the majority of people of Taliban obedience.

In Uzbekistan, Islam has been muzzled and subdued over decades during the Soviet years and mosques were turned in youth centers like the famous Mir al-Arab one, and religion was made to become a mere folklore. Today, there is in Uzbekistan a religious renewal, in spite of the fact that the regime in place is secular and atheist and is a mere mirror image of the Soviet era, trying to keep religion at bay.

In Malaysia and Indonesia, there is an interesting version of Islam: open, tolerant and progressive, worth studying and imitating. Indeed, the constitutions of these countries have inscribed in gold freedom of belief and religion and equality before law to all citizens. As a result of that, these two countries are emerging and flourishing economies that have achieved a notable success in their area, and they are the home of millions of devout Muslims that practice pure and tolerant religion away from any extremism that has marred many other Muslim countries around the world.

Arrival of Islam in Asia

At first view, one wonders how Islam, a religion starting in the Arabian Peninsula, a land far away and culturally different has been able to spread successfully in this continent so diverse and so different? One wonders quite rightly so, what actually caught the attention of the people of this vast continent to embrace this alien and austere religion: is it the magic of Qur’an, the word of Allah, or the concept of monotheism التوحيد or the strength of faith in the God, one and only بالواحد الأوحد الايمان or merely the monotheist humanistic message?

Several orientalists and western intellectuals like to spread the false and culturally-insensitive message that Islam is a brutal religion that converted people to its faith by the sword and by might. Even the last Pope Benedict XVI, regrettably went along this biased view, when he declared in the speech given at the University of Regensburg, Germany, on Sept. 12, 2006, indirectly that The Prophet Mohammad, spread the message of Islam by the violence and by the brutality of the sword:ii

In the seventh conversation edited by Professor Khoury, the emperor touches on the theme of the holy war. The emperor must have known that surah 2, 256 reads: “There is no compulsion in religion”. According to the experts, this is one of the surahs of the early period, when Mohammed was still powerless and under threat. But naturally the emperor also knew the instructions, developed later and recorded in the Qur’an, concerning holy war. Without descending to details, such as the difference in treatment accorded to those who have the “Book” and the “infidels”, he addresses his interlocutor with a startling brusqueness on the central question about the relationship between religion and violence in general, saying: “Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached”. The emperor, after having expressed himself so forcefully, goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. “God”, he says, “is not pleased by blood – and not acting reasonably is contrary to God’s nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats… To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death…”

Many observers consider that the expression of this stark opinion by a person as important as the Pope, in an official and public engagement, is a direct and clear call for hatred against the Muslims and an encouragement for their ostracism and banishment on the international scene. This kind of declaration, in an activity as this, increases stereotypes about Islam and Muslims and feeds Islamophobia that is sweeping the Western world, as wildly as never before.

If the Asians of the early days of Islam, accepted this faith it was certainly not out of fear but out of personal identification with its precepts and teachings, the valid proof being, they are, today, among the most devout Muslims in existence through their strict adherence to the teachings of this religion; and Indonesia is, undoubtedly, the biggest Muslim country, in terms of population: 242.3 million (according to the census of 2011). Islam is the dominant religion in this country, which also has the largest Muslim population than any other land in the world, with approximately 202.9 million identified as Muslim (88.2% of the total population) as of 2009.iii

According to Wikipedia,iv the majority of Indonesians adhere to the Sunni Muslim tradition mainly of the Shafi’i madhhab. In general, the Muslim community can be categorized in terms of two orientations: “modernists,” who closely adhere to orthodox theology while embracing modern learning; and “traditionalists,” who tend to follow the interpretations of local religious leaders (predominantly in Java) and religious teachers at Islamic boarding schools (pesantren).

If Islam had, as some Westerners argue, spread by the sheer force of the sword, the population, like, in the case of colonialism, would have shown fierce resistance to this alien incomer and got rid of it. Most of these countries got rid of colonialism, in the long run, after all, through either peaceful or armed resistance, but, on the other hand, they have never showed any form of repugnance or animosity towards Islam, when in fact they could have done it at will and returned to their initial faiths and no one could have stopped them, but they did not. Instead, Islam is alive and kicking in this continent and it is even flourishing and exhibiting an interesting humanistic philosophy and tolerant message.

Islam spreads in Asia

Trade relations between Arabia and the Sub-continent dated back to ancient times. Long before the advent of Islam in Arabia, the Arabs used to visit the coast of Southern India, which then provided the link between the ports of South and South East Asia. After the Arab traders became Muslim, they brought Islam to South Asia. A number of local Indians living in the coastal areas embraced Islam. However, it was the Muslim conquests in Persia, including the provinces of Kirman and Makran, which brought the Arabs face to face with the then ruler of Sindh, who had allied with the ruler of Makran against the Muslims. But, it was not until the sea borne trade of the Arabs in the Indian Ocean was jeopardized that serious attempts were made to subjugate Sindh.

During the reign of the great Umayyad Caliph Walid bin Abdul Malik, Hajjaj bin Yousaf was appointed as the governor of the Eastern Provinces. At that time, Raja Dahir, a Brahman, ruled Sindh. However, the majority of the people living in the region were Shudders or Buddhists. Dahir treated members of these denominations inhumanly. They were not allowed to ride horses or to wear a turban or shoes. Sindhi pirates, protected by Dahir, were active on the coastal areas and whenever they got a chance, they plundered the ships passing by Daibul.

In 712, Hajjaj sent 6,000 select Syrian and Iraqi soldiers, a camel corps of equal strength and a baggage train of 3,000 camels to Sindh under the command of his nephew and son in-law, Imad-ud-din Muhammad bin Qasim, a young boy of just seventeen years. He also had a ‘manjaniq’, or catapult, which was operated by 500 men and could throw large stones a great distance. On his way the governor of Makran, who provided him with additional forces, joined him. Also, a good number of Jats and Meds, who had suffered at the hands of native rulers, joined the Arab forces.

Muhammad bin Qasim first captured Daibul. He then turned towards Nirun, near modern Hyderabad, where he easily overwhelmed the inhabitants. Dahir decided to oppose the Arabs at Raor. After a fierce struggle, Dahir was overpowered and killed. Raor fell into the hands of the Muslims. The Arab forces then occupied Alor and proceeded towards Multan. Along the way, the Sikka (Uch) fortress, situated on the bank of the Ravi, was also occupied. The Hindu ruler of Multan offered resistance for two months after which the Hindus were overpowered and defeated. Prior to this, Muhammad bin Qasim had taken Brahmanabad and a few other important towns of Sindh. Muhammad bin Qasim was planning to proceed forward when the new Caliph Suleman bin Abdul Malik recalled him. After the departure of Muhammad bin Qasim, different Muslim generals declared their independence at different areas.

The Muslim conquest of Sindh brought peace and prosperity to the region. Law and order was restored. The sea pirates of Sindh, who were protected by Raja Dahir, were crushed. As a result of this, sea trade flourished. The port of Daibul became a very busy and prosperous commercial center. When Muhammad bin Qasim conquered Sindh, the local people, who had been living a life of misery, breathed a sigh of relief. Qasim followed a lenient policy and treated the local population generously. Everyone had full religious freedom and even the spiritual leaders of local religions were given salaries from the government fund. No changes were made in the local administration and local people were allowed to hold offices – particularly in the revenue department. All taxes were abolished and Jaziah جزية was imposed. Everyone was treated equally. Poor people, especially Buddhists, were very impressed by his policies and many of them embraced Islam. A number of Mosques and madrasas were constructed in important towns. In a short period of time Sindh became a center of Islamic learning. A number of religious scholars, writers and poets emerged and they spread their knowledge. The Muslims learned Indian sciences like medicine, astronomy and mathematics. Sanskrit books on various subjects were translated into Arabic. During the reign of Haroon al Rasheed, a number of Hindu scholars were even invited to Baghdad.

The establishment of Muslim rule also paved way for future propagation of Islam in Sindh and the adjoining regions. Later Sindh also attracted Ismaili missionaries who were so successful that Sindh passed under Ismaili rule. With the conquest of Lahore by Mahmud of Ghazni, missionary activity began again under the aegis of Sufis who were the main agents in the Islamization of the entire region.

The opening of Central Asia and the implementation of Islam was completed in the eighth century A.D., and brought to the region a new belief and culture that until now continues to be dominant. The Muslims first entered Mawarannahr in the middle of the seventh century through raids during their conquest of Persia. The Soghdians and other Iranian peoples of Central Asia were unable to defend their land against the Khilafah because of internal divisions and the lack of strong indigenous leadership. The Muslims, on the other hand, were led by a brilliant general, Qutaybah ibn Muslim, and were highly motivated by the desire to spread the Islamic religion. Because of these factors, and the strength of the Islamic ‘aqeedah and the nature of the shari’a, the population of Mawarannahr was easily liberated.

The new way of life brought by the Muslims spread throughout the region. The native cultures were replaced in the ensuing centuries as Islam molded the people into a single ummah أمة – the Islamic ummah. Howeverة the destiny of Central Asia as an Islamic region was firmly established by the Khilafah’s (Caliph Abu’l-Abbas) victory over the Chinese armies in 750 in a battle at the Talas River.

Under Islamic rule, Central Asia was an important centre of culture and trade for centuries. The language of government, literature, and commerce, originally Persian became Arabic (however as the Abbasid Caliphate began to weaken and Arabic became neglected, the Persian language began to regain its pre-eminent role in the region as the language of literature and government).

Mawarannahr continued to be an important political player in regional affairs. During the height of the Abbasid Caliphate in the eighth and the ninth centuries, Central Asia and Mawarannahr experienced a truly golden age. Bukhara became one of the leading centers of learning, culture, and art in the Muslim world, its magnificence rivaling contemporaneous cultural centers such as Baghdad, Cairo, and Cordoba. Some of the greatest historians, scientists, and geographers in the history of Islamic culture were natives of the region, and one of the copies of the Quran originally prepared in the time of Caliph Uthman is kept in Tashkent.

The new Islamic spiritual and political situation in Central Asia determined a new technological and cultural progress. It marked the production of the Samarkand paper (since the 8th century under the Chinese influence the people of Samarkand learned to manufacture paper from the rags), which supplanted papyrus and parchment in the Islamic countries at the end of the 10th century. Furthermore scientists who were citizens of the Khilafah such as al-Khawarezmi, Beiruni, Farabi, Abu Ali ibn Sina (Avicenna) brought fame to the area all over the world, generating respect across the world, and many scientific achievements of the epoch made a great impact on the European science (it is enough to mention the astronomical tables of Samarkand astronomers from Ulughbek’s observatory.)

During the comparatively peaceful era of Islamic rule, culture and the arts flourished in Central Asia. Jizya جزية was imposed upon all who refused to accept Islam and the Jewish historian Benjamin of Tudela noted during his travels in 1170 the existence of a Jewish community numbering 50,000 in nearby Samarkand.

The actual timing and introduction of the Islamic religion and its practice to Southeast Asia is subject to debate. European historians have argued that it came through trading contacts with India whereas some Southeast Asian Muslim scholars claim it was brought to the region directly from Arabia in the Middle East. Other scholars claim that Muslim Chinese who were engaged in trade introduced it.

Whatever the source, scholars acknowledge that Muslim influence in Southeast Asia is at least six centuries old, or was present by 1400 A.D. Some argue for origins to at least 1100 A.D. in the earliest areas of Islamic influence, such as in Aceh, northern Sumatra in Indonesia.

Islam in Southeast Asia

Whatever exact dates and sources one chooses to support; there is no doubt that Islamization of many peoples in present-day Malaysia southern Thailand Indonesia Brunei and the southern Philippines occurred within a few hundred years. The process of religious conversion absorbed many pre-existing Southeast Asian beliefs (often referred to as ‘animism’, or the belief in the power of invisible spirits of people’s ancestors and the spirits of nature to influence the fortunes of humans on earth.)

The scholar Anthony Reid, Professor of History at the University of California Los Angeles, argues that this process of Islamization (and Christianization in the Philippines) occurred rapidly in Southeast Asia especially during the period of 1550-1650.

For example, Islam became strong in eastern Indonesia, especially coastal kingdoms of Sulawesi, Lombok, Kalimantan, Sumbawa, Makassar, and in Sulu and Magindanao (Cotabato Province) in the southern Philippines from 1603-1612. This does not mean that rulers and their subjects in these areas were totally devoted to upholding all of the basic rules of Islam. It means that Islamic influence was present, as evidenced through ruling elites’ obligation to renounce the consumption of pork and to pronounce the daily five prayers. Some also practiced circumcision during this period.

Islam in South Asia: the Taliban experience

Islam is the official religion of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, which has a population of about 190,291,129. The majority (95-97%) of the Pakistan people are Muslim while the remaining 3-5% is Christian, Hindu, and others. Sunnis are the majority while the Shias make up between 5-20% of the total Muslim population of the country. Pakistan has the second largest number of Shias after Iran, which numbers between 16.5 million to as high as 30 million.

Pakistan occupies a unique place in the Muslim world.  It is the only state explicitly established in the name of Islam, and yet fifty years after its independence, the role and place of Islam in the country remains unresolved.  The basic divide regarding the relationship between religion and the state pits those who see the existence of Pakistan as necessary to protect the social, political and economic rights of Muslims, and those who see it as an Islamic religious state.  During the past fifty years, the public has resoundingly rejected Islamic political parties in every general election.

A combination of domestic and international developments over the past two decades, however, appears to be pushing Pakistan in the direction of a more explicitly religious state.  Just in the last year, for example, the government of Pakistan has introduced strict shari’a laws and there has been a rise in Shia-Sunni violence.  Some analysts have even begun to consider the prospect of a Talibanized Pakistan.  The shift from liberalism to a more overt religious character for the country has been affected by developments in neighboring Iran, Afghanistan and India.

Sufism has a strong tradition in Pakistan. The Muslim Sufi missionaries played a pivotal role in converting the millions of native people to Islam. As in other areas where Sufis introduced it, Islam to some extent syncretized with pre-Islamic influences, resulting in a religion with some traditions distinct from other parts of the Muslim world. The Naqshbandiya, Qadiriya, Chishtiya and Suhrawardiyya  silsas (Muslim Orders) have a large following in Pakistan.

Sufis whose shrines receive much national attention are Data Ganj Baksh (Ali Hajweri) in Lahore (ca. 11th century), Baha-ud-din Zakariya in Multan and Shahbaz Qalander in Sehwan (ca. 12th century) and Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai in Bhit,  Sindh and Rehman Baba in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province.

Popular Sufi culture is centered on Thursday night gatherings at shrines and annual festivals which feature Sufi music and dance. Contemporary Islamic fundamentalists criticize its popular character, which in their view, does not accurately reflect the teachings and practice of the Prophet and his companions.v There have been terrorist attacks directed at Sufi shrines and festivals, 5 in 2010 that killed 64 people.vi vii

Pakistan is wallowing in a real quagmire which encapsulates Pakistan’s current problems and their genesis. They are viral issues that occupy considerable space even outside Pakistan such as the army’s omnipresent role, the Islamists, the existential threat at the hands of al Qaeda and Tehrike Taliban Pakistan, and the persistent fears of an Islamist or military re-takeover in a realistic perspective.

The contentious themes of democracy, development, and security in Pakistan today are closely interlinked, the political and economic experience of the past 50 years show that neither democracy nor capitalist development can survive without the other.

In Pakistan, tradition and family life continue to contribute long term stability; the areas where very rapid changes are taking place are large population increase, urbanization, and economic development, and the nature of civil society and the state. Pakistan has wide range of ethnic groups and popular culture is strife.

Since 2001, terrorism has grown to become the biggest security threat to Pakistan, although a range of other internal security threats are still present, due to enduring problems with sectarianism, religious extremism, drug and weapon smuggling, and violent ethnic and religious disputes.

The government is playing its role in addressing many of the security threats and conflicts faced by Pakistan but the role of civil society has been crucial. Some local and international NGOs and think-tanks have been executing projects to promote inter-faith harmony, women rights, and peace building within Pakistan.

Internally, the wave of terrorism and religious extremism spearheaded by the Taliban has destabilized and polarized the country. The Taliban phenomenon in Pakistan has, also, important repercussions on the situation in Afghanistan and indirectly on its relations with the US because of the close links between Pakistan Taliban (TTP) and the Afghan Taliban. The issues of the economy and the Taliban constitute the most serious challenges awaiting the new Prime Minister’s attention. Who are the Talibans?

Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (the TTP) (Urdu/Pashto language: تحریک طالبان پاکستان; lit. Student Movement of Pakistan), alternatively referred to as the Pakistani Taliban, is an umbrella organization of various Islamist militant groups based in the northwestern Federally Administered Tribal Areas along the Afghan border in Pakistan. Most, but not all, Pakistani Taliban groups coalesce under the TTP.viii In December 2007 about 13 groups united under the leadership of Baitullah Mehsud to form the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan.ix Among the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan’s stated objectives are resistance against the Pakistani state, enforcement of their interpretation of shari’a and a plan to unite against NATO-led forces in Afghanistan.x

The TTP differs in structure to the Afghan Taliban in that it lacks a central command and is a much looser coalition of various militant groups, united by hostility towards the central government in Islamabad. Several analysts describe the TTP’s structure as a loose network of dispersed constituent groups that vary in size and in levels of coordination. The various factions of the TTP tend to be limited to their local areas of influence and often lack the ability to expand their operations beyond that territory.xi

Nawaz Sharif had clearly articulated his preference for dialogue with the Taliban to overcome the serious dangers that they pose to the country’s security and stability. He also called for an end to the drone attacks by the US in his speech in Parliament after his election as the Prime Minister.

Nawaz Sharif’s willingness to resolve the Taliban issue through dialogue, if possible, has generated a heated debate in the country on its pros and cons. The liberals, on the whole, are opposed to the idea, while the conservative parties and groups seem to favor the dialogue option.

Contrary to the fashionable view in Pakistan, the Taliban as an organized group emerged much after the withdrawal of the Soviet troops from Afghanistan in 1989. It is true, however, that many of the leaders and members of the Taliban had played an active role in the Afghan jihad against the Soviet occupation. The emergence of the Taliban as an organized group in Afghanistan under the leadership of Mullah Omer in 1994 was, in fact, a movement of protest against the lack of peace and stability, which prevailed in Afghanistan after the fall of the Najibullah regime and the alienation of the Afghan people because of the excesses of the various Afghan commanders.

This explains more than anything else the success of the Afghan Taliban in establishing their writ on most of Afghanistan under the leadership of Mullah Omer barring some small areas in north-eastern Afghanistan by 1998. But Pakistan’s help to the Taliban did play an important role in their successes against their opponents in Afghanistan. The fighting and instability in Afghanistan enabled al-Qaeda to establish its foothold in the country leading ultimately to 9/11 and the fall of the Taliban government following the US-led attack. This inevitably led to the expansion of the fighting by the Afghan Taliban against the US-led forces in Afghanistan because of the tribal links on both sides of the Pak-Afghan border.

Part 2: Islam in Action

Islam in Post-Soviet Central Asia: growth and repression

In stark contrast to the popular “clash of civilizations” theory that sees Islam inevitably in conflict with the West, Russia remarkably and aptly constructed an empire with broad Muslim support and succeeded in creating a fascinating relationship between an empire and its subjects. As America and Western Europe debated then and still debate today, to no avail, how best to secure the allegiances of their Muslim populations.i

Central Asia has been unimaginably transformed by the long and arduous Soviet presence in the region and communist austere indoctrination that not only destroyed the local culture and belief but created subservient and docile elites believing strongly, and, almost blindly, in the utopian Bolshevik project of remaking the world. This absurd project featured a sustained assault on Islam that destroyed patterns of Islamic learning and thoroughly de-Islamized public life.

Islam became synonymous with tradition and was subordinated to powerful ethno-national identities that crystallized during the Soviet period. This legacy endures today and for the vast majority of the population, a return to Islam means the recovery of traditions destroyed under Communism.  The secularization of Islam in Central Asia compares greatly to experiences in Turkey, the former Yugoslavia, and other secular Muslim states.

Islam is by far the dominant religion in Uzbekistan, as Muslims constitute 90% of the population while 5% of the population follows Russian Orthodox Christianity according to a 2009 US State Department release.ii

However, a 2009 Pew Research Center report stated that Uzbekistan’s population is 96.3% Muslim.iii An estimated 93,000 Jews were once present. Despite its predominance, the practice of Islam is far from monolithic. Many versions of the faith have been practiced in Uzbekistan. The conflict of Islamic tradition with various agendas of reform or secularization throughout the 20th century has left the outside world with a confused notion of Islamic practices in Central Asia. In Uzbekistan the end of Soviet power did not bring an upsurge of Islamic fundamentalism, as many had predicted, but rather a gradual re-acquaintance with the precepts of the faith. However after 2000, there seems to be a rise of support in favor of the Islamists, which is whipped up by the repressive measures of the authoritarian regime.

For the most part, however, in the first years of independence, Uzbekistan is seeing a resurgence of a more secular Islam, and even that movement is in its very early stages. According to a public opinion survey conducted in 1994, interest in Islam is growing rapidly, but personal understanding of Islam by Uzbeks remains limited or distorted. For example, about half of ethnic Uzbek respondents professed belief in Islam when asked to identify their religious faith. Among that number, however, knowledge or practice of the main precepts of Islam was weak. Despite a reported spread of Islam among Uzbekistan’s younger population.

In post-Soviet Central Asia, ordinary Muslims in the region, focusing in particular on Uzbekistan, negotiate understandings of Islam as an important marker for identity, grounding for morality and as a tool for everyday problem-solving in the economically harsh, socially insecure and politically tense atmosphere of present-day Uzbekistan. In the historical Islamic city of Bukhara the local forms of Sufism and saint veneration facilitate the pursuit of more modest goals of agency and belonging, as opposed to the utopian illusions of fundamentalist Muslim doctrines.iv

In recent years, the Uzbekistan government has been criticized for its brutal suppression of its Muslim population. However, Muslims in this part of the world negotiate their religious practices despite the restraints of a stifling authoritarian regime. Fascinatingly, the restrictive atmosphere has actually helped shape the moral context of peoples’ lives, and understandings of what it means to be a Muslim emerge creatively out of lived experience.v

An estimated 6,500 people are in jail in Uzbekistan because of their religious or political beliefs. More than half are accused of being Hizbu Tahrir (HT) members, while most of the others are branded as Wahhabis, who practice the Saudi brand of Sunni Islamic extremism. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, there was a great revival of religious activity in Central Asia. Mosques mushroomed, partly supported by Pakistani and Saudi money. A brand of radical, internationalist Islam gave birth to the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) and HT. In 1999 and 2000, fighters of the IMU in Tajikistan attempted incursions into Uzbekistan. Terrorist attacks in Tashkent in 1999 were attributed by the authorities to Islamic radicals, and were dealt with ruthlessly.

The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) was formed in 1998 with the objective to create an Islamist state in Uzbekistan. In the following years, this organization expanded its goals, and now aims to create an Islamist state across Central Asia, in an area sometimes referred to as Turkistan. The theoretical Islamist state would encompass Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and the Xinxiang province of China. With this enlarged goal in mind, some members of the group began to refer to themselves as the Islamic Party of Turkistan.

IMU is comprised of Islamic militants from Uzbekistan and its Central Asian neighbors. The group was co-founded by a mullah in the Islamic underground and a former Soviet soldier who served in the Soviet-Afghan war. It was the co-founders experience in fighting against the mujahidin in Afghanistan that eventually led him to radical Islam and an alliance with Osama bin Laden. As the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan grew increasingly close to bin Laden and al-Qaeda, the group began to subscribe to the al-Qaeda ideology and objectives. Therefore, IMU’s attacks against Afghanistan’s Northern Alliance on behalf of al-Qaeda and Taliban, as well as their increasingly broad objectives to create a regional Islamic state, can be traced to its involvement with bin Laden. In return, IMU received money from bin Laden, safe haven from the Taliban, and a hand in the drug trafficking trade between Afghanistan and Central Asia.

With IMU’s increased interest in a regional Islamic state, this entity shifted from attacking strictly Uzbek targets to attacking coalition forces in Afghanistan and U.S. diplomatic facilities in Central Asia. However, IMU’s repeated defeats in these anti-Coalition engagements have all but completely destroyed the group.

The TTP and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) have a long history of collaboration. At one point prior to his appointment as TTP chief, Baitullah Mehsud lived with Tohir Yo’ldosh, the IMU’s former leader, who became an ideological inspiration and offered the services of his 2,500 fighters to Mehsud.  As a counterbalance to militant Islam in Uzbekistan and Central Asia, there is an interesting revival of Sufi Islam that preaches integral piety, love of the other, internal peace and fusion with the creator.

Sufism—a mystical form of Islam that has flourished in the Muslim world for centuries—has enjoyed a strong revival in Central Asia.  In a Carnegie Paper entitled: Sufism in Central Asia: A Force for Moderation or a Cause of Politicization?, Martha Brill Olcott explores Sufism’s potential to become a political movement in Central Asia by analyzing the movement’s history and current leaders in Central Asia, particularly Uzbekistan. The future role Sufism will play in Central Asia is dependent on both secular and religious circumstances. Olcott contends that political leaders will require a political subtlety that has been lacking in recent decades in order to construct a reasonable balance between Sufis and fundamentalists. Olcott also argues that while Sufism currently poses little threat to the secular ideology of Central Asian states, there is potential for a dangerous backlash if governments openly try to use Sufi ideology as a way to gain support.vi

Islam in Southeast Asia: Openness and Tolerance

Malaysia is a multi-confessional country with Islam being the largest practiced religion, comprising approximately 61.4% Muslim adherents, or around 17 million people, as of 2010. vii Article 3 of the Constitution of Malaysia establishes Islam as the “religion of the Federation”.

However, Malaysia’s law and jurisprudence is based on the English common law. Shari’a law is applicable only to Muslims, and is restricted to family law and religious observances. Therefore, there has been much debate on whether Malaysia is a secular state or an Islamic state.

Nine of the Malaysian states, namely Kelantan, Terengganu, Pahang, Kedah, Perak, Perlis, Selangor, Johor and Negeri Sembilan have constitutional Malay monarchs (most of them styled as sultans).

These Malay rulers still maintain authority over religious affairs in states. The states of Penang, Malacca, Sarawak and Sabah do not have any sultan, but the king (Yang di-Pertuan Agong) plays the role of head of Islam in each of those states as well as in each of the Federal Territories of Kuala Lumpur, Labuan and Putrajaya.

The Malay ethnic group has been divided politically, and therefore they require the support of either Chinese or Indians in order to gain political dominance.  This situation leads to a central fact in the country’s political life: Malay-Muslim dominance has always been negotiated amongst various forces.  Inter-ethnic and inter-religious coalition parties, whether in opposition or ruling parties, have dominated the country’s electoral politics in post-independence politics.

One complication is that the increased emphasis on Malay and Islamic identity in economic and public life has exacerbated the problematic of relations between Malay-Muslims and non-Malay non-Muslims.  The idea of Malaysia as a united nation-state, or Bangsa Malaysia, has been challenged.  Still, most religious and ethnic minorities have decided to remain Malaysian and enjoy the benefits of the relatively strong economy of the country.  It is noteworthy, for example, that the recent economic crisis did not lead to an out-migration of Chinese and Indians as witnessed in some of the other countries hit by the financial crisis.  In fact, these minorities have at times openly supported the troubled Mahathir government.  The main reason for this support may be a desire to assure a stable political system that will ensure the safety of their economic interests.

Indonesia, where nearly 90% of the populace is Muslim, is the world’s largest Islamic country.  However, Islam has never played a central role in the country’s politics.  Nevertheless, there has been a persistent tension between those advocates of a more prominent and formal role for Islam in the country, and those who resist making Islam an organized political actor.

In the late 1980s, under the now defunct New Order era of former President Suharto, there was an effort to reach out to Muslims and Islam in a more explicit way.  The main reason for this was President Suharto’s desire to widen his power base beyond the military and the secular ruling political party, Golkar.  A symbolic indication of this effort was President Suharto’s decision in 1990 to make his first trip or Hajj to Mecca.  Other steps on the path to Islamization of the New Order regime included reversing the ban on the wearing of hijab (head covering) for female students in state-run schools and the founding of the country’s first Islamic bank.

Roughly a decade after Suharto’s attempt to encompass Islam in the political sphere, the New Order collapsed.  On 21 May 1998, President Suharto resigned.  In essence, the effort by Suharto to widen his political base by reaching out to Islam did not prevent the fall of his regime. While Suharto’s efforts in the preceding several years to cultivate Islam may have re-invigorated Islamic groups and organizations, the current evolving role of Islam in the politics and policy-making of post-Suharto Indonesia is likely to be more sustainable then it was at the beginning of Suharto’s New Order era.  A major reason for this expectation is that there has been, over the past decades, a surge in religious consciousness among many circles within the Indonesian Muslim community.

Islam has not been a monolithic force in the politics of Indonesia.  There have been divergent views amongst several Islamic organizations and movements, most prominently the NU and the Muhammadiyah.  The New Order government’s policy of diminishing the role of political parties combined with the military’s suspicion of Islam, led Islamic organizations to concentrate on religious, social and educational activities rather than politics.  This very shift in emphasis led to Indonesian society becoming more Islamicized, including the rise of a Muslim middle class that entered both the government and the military.  These changes in part led the military to reassess its view of Islam’s role in Indonesia.  Moreover, in the post-Suharto context of Indonesian politics, Islam has emerged as, perhaps, the most important force.  Islam is likely to be a major force in the politics of Indonesia for the foreseeable future.

The Nature Of Today’s Islam In Asia

For centuries Islam in Asia was renowned for its adaptability to local practices and tolerance of other religions. Over the past three decades, however, fundamentalists have tried to homogenize Islam, introducing new tensions. More than any other factor, what has fueled conflicts and divided Muslims and others in otherwise tolerant and harmonious plural societies of Asia, is the slow but steady process of the transformation of Islam in the region, from a syncretic and inclusive Islam to a puritanical and exclusivist one under the influence of ideas, norms, practices, and finances flowing from the Arab world.

The “Islam of the desert” has made inroads across the Indian Ocean. This process of homogenization and regimentation—a process referred to as the “Arabization” of Islam—puts greater emphasis on rituals and codes of conduct than on substance, through the Wahhabi and Salafi creeds, a rigidly puritanical branch of Islam exported from, and subsidized by, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The internationalization of Islam drew Asian Muslims to the desert and brought the desert to them.

Such “globalization of political Islam” could threaten stability throughout Asia and the world. Unfortunately, too many proponents of any form of fundamentalism rely on it as a tool, not for inspiring spirituality, but for acquiring economic or political power.

Nevertheless, it is believed among the majority of observers that Islam in Southeast Asia is offering a very attractive school of thought based on tolerance, acceptance of the other, intercultural communication, peace and development for all. In this regard, Bruce Vaughn, an analyst in Southeast and South Asian Affairs, Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade, argues quite rightly:viii

“Islam in Southeast Asia is relatively more moderate in character than in much of the Middle East. This moderation stems in part from the way Islam evolved in Southeast Asia. Islam came to Southeast Asia with traders rather than through military conquest as it did in much of South Asia and the Arab Middle East. Islam also was overlaid on animist, Hindu, and Buddhist traditions in Indonesia, which are said to give it a more syncretic aspect. Islam spread throughout much of Southeast Asia by the end of the seventeenth century. Islam in Asia is more politically diverse than in the Middle East.”

Drawing a parallel between Islam in Morocco and Indonesia and Pakistan

Morocco and Indonesia, according to the American anthropologist Clifford Geertz, have some parallel with each other in terms of faith, in the cultural area. In his acclaimed work entitled: “Islam Observed: Religious Development in Morocco and Indonesia”ix, which remains today one of the most authoritative works in comparative religion between two Muslim countries on the two edges of the geographical area of the Muslim world.

In this fascinating study, Clifford Geertz begins his argument by outlining the problem conceptually and providing an overview of the two countries. He then traces the evolution of their classical religious styles which, with disparate settings and unique histories, produced strikingly different spiritual climates. So in Morocco, the Islamic conception of life came to mean activism, moralism, and intense individuality, while in Indonesia the same concept emphasized aestheticism, inwardness, and the radical dissolution of personality. In order to assess the significance of these interesting developments, Geertz sets forth a series of theoretical observations concerning the social role of religion.

In the preface of this interesting work, he sets out to define his approach to the matter and inherent philosophy:x

“I have attempted both to lay out a general framework for the comparative analysis of religion and to apply it to a study of the development of a supposedly single creed, Islam, in two quite contrasting civilizations, the Indonesian and the Moroccan.”

He explores the impact of local culture and “common sense” on Islam (and the reverse) by tracing the evolution of Indonesian and Moroccan classical religious styles, and manages to unravel theory into accessible threads and uses this final chapter to weave together the earlier chapters. This book is, essentially, an exploration of religion’s impact on collective consciousness in Indonesia and Morocco.

In essence, the book is primarily a comparative examination of how Indonesia and Morocco, both Muslim countries, have developed in religious belief and to some extent in political belief, according to their different geographical environment, economic structure and cultural history.

The author’s argument begins from the contrast between the tribesmen/townsmen symbiosis of Moroccan society, with its uncertain pastoral and agricultural base and the mature peasant society of the major part of Indonesia, with its highly productive wet rice civilization.

He argues quite forcefully, and with great amount of the assurance of a social scientist with tremendous experience:xi

“In Morocco, civilization was built on nerve; in Indonesia on diligence”.

The turbulent Arab-Amazigh/Berber Moroccan background gave value to both visionary devoutness and self-assertion combined on occasion in the key figure of the warrior-saint; the classical Indic civilization stressed more aesthetic and philosophic values, seen over a much more complex syncretistic range.

Where Moroccan religious ideology developed a rigorous fundamentalism, Indonesian proliferated into more abstract symbolism, pragmatic in allowing much more scope for variation. But in both a basic problem, is not so much what to believe as how to believe it. Increasingly, people hold religious view rather than are held by them; there is a difference between being religious-minded and being religious.

In a similar work entitled: Islam in Tribal Societies: From the Atlas to the Indus, edited by Akbar S. Ahmed and David M. Hartxii, these two prominent academics and anthropologists conducted a lively debate in the social sciences around the concepts of “tribe”, “segmentary societies” and “Islam in society”. This wide-ranging collection by thirteen distinguished anthropologists contributes to the debate by examining various segmentary Islamic tribal societies from Morocco to Pakistan.

Conclusions about Islam in Asia

The presentation on the roles of Islam in Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Malaysia, and Indonesia suggests that Islam’s role in politics, societies and economies has grown.  Despite the growing role of Islam and the rise of more activist and religious Muslim middle classes, there appear to be few signs of an Islamic fundamentalist trend in Asia.  The point was made repeatedly that Islam in most of Asia must compete with other identities, most notably ethnicity.  Moreover, Islam in Asia generally is built on pre-Islamic influences such as Hinduism and Buddhism which still persist.  All of these factors tend to make Islam in Asia of a variety different from the more doctrinaire influences of the Arabian Peninsula.

Only in one country, Pakistan, does it appear that Islam is threatening to take an extra-parliamentary role towards politics.  Islamic politics of the street intended to undermine Pakistan’s barely functioning democracy is possibly a real danger to the political stability of the country.  Just how serious a threat Islam poses to Pakistan’s political system, and how soon, is a matter of speculation.  But what is not beyond doubt is that factional fighting between Sunni and Shia Muslims in Pakistan has grown, and so, too, has intolerance against the country’s minority communities whether they are Christian, Hindu or Ahmadi.

For Azhdar Kurtov, a Central Asia expert at the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies, the Uzbeks of Central Asia are the most populous ethnic group and most settled nation; they have a greater tradition of statehood than their neighbors, and greater claims to regional leadership. They haven’t achieved this leadership because they have fewer natural resources than Kazakhstan, and this has created certain conflicts. Also, the Uzbeks have much more of an Islamic doctrine than the Turkmen, Kazaks or Kyrgyz. He goes on to argue about the future of Islam in Uzbekistan in the following terms:xiii

“The IMU really has made itself evident, with terrorist acts on central Tashkent squares and attempts to infiltrate Uzbekistan via Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. These are indisputable facts. The IMU’s actual situation, though, remains opaque – we don’t know the numbers involved, their location, who the leaders are, whether the IMU is in contact with al-Qaeda and what that relationship looks like, or whether it wants to create a kind of caliphate in Central Asia, including Uzbekistan. No one knows for sure whether all this is true, or whether it’s been invented by Uzbekistan’s intelligence service. Because the Uzbek justice system is sui generis and the state is secretive and doesn’t allow freedom of speech, all these things need to be checked carefully.”

In Indonesia and Malaysia, where Islamic identity and activity in social, economic and political dimensions has been on the increase, political stability arising from Islam’s role is not the critical issue.  Rather, the compelling issues appear to be accommodating Islamic activism in the emerging politics of the two countries and protecting the rights of minorities.  The New Order of Suharto’s Indonesia did not collapse because of Islamic activism, and Islam is not behind the rough political dynamics of Malaysia during the past two years.  But, as both countries move through an era of political change, Islam will certainly be one if not the most critical of the many factors shaping the future.

The role of Islam in Asian regional politics is extraordinarily complicated and differs from sub-region to sub-region not to mention across Asia.  In South Asia for example, Islam has not proved to be a tie that binds as indicated by the separation of East Pakistan (Bangladesh) from co-religionist West Pakistan in 1971. (The majority-Hindu states of India and Nepal certainly have not always had good relations either).  Intra-regional relations in South Asia are certainly complicated by religion (whether Islam or Hinduism, or for that matter Buddhism) but religion does not shape these relations.  Nationalism, power politics, and ethnic identities are much stronger factors in intra-regional relations.

All in all, it appears that none of the Asian countries considered in this work, with the possible exception or Pakistan, are in danger of being thrown into turmoil and instability due to an Islamic revolution.  There are ways in which the role of Islam may affect the stability of the some of these states, however; such as incorporating Islamic political parties in the new dispensation in Indonesia or ensuring the confidence and safety of non-Muslim minorities in Malaysia and Indonesia.  In India and Philippines, non-Muslim majorities must work to ensure the confidence and safety of the minority Muslim community.  There are also legitimate questions about the degree to which Islam will affect the definition of nationalism in Muslim-majority countries of the region.

You can follow Professor Mohamed Chtatou on Twitter: @Ayurinu

Notes:
Part 1
i. Cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physics
ii. Cf. Full text of Benedict XVI’s speech in Germany Text, provided by Vatican, includes comments on Islam. http://www.nbcnews.com/id/14848884/#.UbseQ-c99i1
iii.Cf. Miller, Tracy, ed. (October 2009), Mapping the Global Muslim Population: A Report on the Size and Distribution of the World’s Muslim Population (PDF), Pew Research Center, retrieved 2009-10-08
iv. Cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_in_Indonesia
v. Cf. op. cited.
vi. Cf. Produced by Charlotte Buchen. “Sufism Under attack in Pakistan” (video). The New York Times.
vii. Cf. Huma Imtiaz; Charlotte Buchen (January 6, 2011). “The Islam That Hard-Liners Hate” (blog)
viii. Cf. Yusufzai, Rahimullah (22 September 2008). “A Who’s Who of the Insurgency in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province: Part One – North and South Waziristan”. Terrorism Monitor 6 (18).
ix. Cf. Abbas, Hassan (January 2008). “A Profile of Tehrik-I-Taliban Pakistan” (PDF). CTC Sentinel (West Point, NY: Combating Terrorism Center) 1 (2): 1–4.
x. Cf.  j Carlotta Gall, Ismail Khan, Pir Zubair Shah and Taimoor Shah (26 March 2009). “Pakistani and Afghan Taliban Unify in Face of U.S. Influx”. New York Times.
xi. Cf. Gall, Carlotta; Sabrina (6 May 2010). “Pakistani Taliban Are Said to Expand Alliances”. The New York Times.

Part 2
i. Cf. Crews, R.D. 2009. For Prophet and Tsar: Islam and Empire in Russia and Central Asia. Harvard University Press.
ii. Cf. http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/2924.htm
iii. Cf. http://www.pewforum.org/uploadedfiles/Topics/Demographics/Muslimpopulation.pdf
iv. Cf. Louw, M. A. 2009. Everyday Islam in Post-Soviet Central Asia. Routledge.
v. Cf. Rasanayagam, J. 2011. Islam in Post-Soviet Uzbekistan: The Morality of Experience. Cambridge University Press.
vi. Cf. http://carnegieendowment.org/files/cp84_olcott_final2.pdf
vii. Cf. http://features.pewforum.org/muslim-population-graphic/#/Malaysia
viii. Cf. http://fpc.state.gov/documents/organization/43999.pdf
ix. Cf. Geertz, C. 1971. Islam Observed: Religious Development in Morocco and Indonesia. University of Chicago Press.
x. Cf . op. cited.
xi. Cf. op. cited, p. 11.
xii. Cf. Akbar S. Ahmed and David M. Hart (ed.): Islam in tribal societies: from the Atlas to the Indus. 343 pp. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984.
xiii. Cf. http://iwpr.net/report-news/role-islam-uzbekistan-certain-grow

Attorney General Jeff Sessions recently ordered the Justice Department to increase the use of civil asset forfeiture, thus once again endorsing an unconstitutional, authoritarian, and increasingly unpopular policy.

Civil asset forfeiture, which should be called civil asset theft, is the practice of seizing property believed to be involved in a crime. The government keeps the property even if it never convicts, or even charges, the owner of the property.

Police can even use civil asset theft to steal from people whose property was used in criminal activity without the owners’ knowledge. Some have even lost their homes because a renter or houseguest was dealing drugs on the premises behind the owners’ backs.

Civil asset theft is a multi-billion dollar a year moneymaker for all levels of government. Police and prosecutors receive more than their “fair share” of the loot. According to a 2016 study by the Institute for Justice, 43 states allow police and prosecutors to keep at least half of the loot they got from civil asset theft.

Obviously, this gives police an incentive to aggressively use civil asset theft, even against those who are not even tangentially involved in a crime. For example, police in Tenaha, Texas literally engaged in highway robbery — seizing cash and other items from innocent motorists — while police in Detroit once seized every car in an art institute’s parking lot. The official justification for that seizure was that the cars belonged to attendees at an event for which the institute had failed to get a liquor license.

The Tenaha police are not the only ones targeting those carrying large sums of cash. Anyone traveling with “too much” cash runs the risk of having it stolen by a police officer, since carrying large amounts of cash is treated as evidence of involvement in criminal activity.

Civil asset theft also provides an easy way for the IRS to squeeze more money from the American taxpayer. As the growing federal debt increases the pressure to increase tax collections without raising tax rates, the IRS will likely ramp up its use of civil asset forfeiture.

Growing opposition to the legalized theft called civil asset forfeiture has led 24 states to pass laws limiting its use. Sadly, but not surprisingly, Attorney General Jeff Sessions is out of step with this growing consensus. After all, Sessions is a cheerleader for the drug war, and civil asset theft came into common usage as a tool in the drug war.

President Trump could do the American people a favor by naming a new attorney general who opposes police state policies like the drug war and police state tactics like civil asset theft.

This article was published at RonPaul Institute

On almost a daily basis I see the unbounded bias of the mainstream media against the Trump Administration.   It is morally corrupt and, worse yet, criminally unpatriotic. It is clearly an attempt by liberals and Democrats to undo the legitimate election of President Trump. What I saw the other day was the epitome of this media bias. It was when CNN’s Jim Acosta assailed the new Trump immigration policy by asserting that it was biased in favor of English speakers from the UK and Australia. Why was this particular assertion so clearly utterly stupid and wrong?

At the time I saw this press room interaction between Acosta and White House policy advisor Stephen Miller I was on a cruise. Anyone who has been on a cruise in past decades knows first hand that Acosta was totally and intentionally biased in trying to convince Americans that English speaking as a requirement, among others, for getting into the USA was biased against countless countries other than the two he stated. Why? Because on virtually every cruise ship the many hundreds of officers and staff come from a great many nations other than the USA, the UK and Australia.   In fact, virtually none come from those three. What do all of the countless thousands cruise workers have in common? They all speak English.

On my most recent cruise large numbers of cruise workers came from, for example, India, the Philippines, Thailand, Croatia, Russia, Italy, Myanmar, Honduras, Poland and many, many more.

Why would a supposedly informed, major CNN newsman say such a stupid thing? Is he actually uninformed that people worldwide learn English as a second language? Has he never met many people from various countries who speak English, including – are you ready for this – the many foreign news people he regularly interacts with?

It turns out that giving a priority for English speaking immigrants for green cards is not really counter to recent reality as reported after the Acosta fiasco:

According to the census data, a full 11.3 percent of recent immigrants speak only English. Another 32.9 percent speak English “very well.” Nearly twenty-two percent report that they speak English “well.” In aggregate, then, two-thirds of recently arrived immigrants speak English well or better.

Looked at from the other side, only around 13 percent of recent immigrants speak no English at all, while 21.3 percent rate as speaking English “not well.” This suggests that the number of non-English speaking immigrants who enter under current law is far smaller than Acosta apparently believes.

Like MSNBC, CNN reveals its anti-Trump bias in virtually everything it does. It is an insult for the many millions of Americans who voted for Trump or who silently support his policies. True, I, like many of those, regularly find many of Trump’s statements and actions repulsive and counterproductive to his policy agenda.   At those moments, however, I remind myself how awful I would feel if Hillary Clinton was president.

This is the ugly media reality.   CNN and many other news outlets have no shame, no honesty, no objectivity, no respect for American democracy, and no respect for the millions of Americans who rejected, for very good reasons, Clinton.   We need a national boycott of all the media that constantly show their media bias. They make a mockery of the much loved freedom of the press hallmark of our democracy. In the face of such media bias, those media undermine freedom of the press, which should not be seen as a license to blatantly and incessantly abandon objectivity and fairness in order to spread propaganda serving their political preferences.

Freedom of the press has become, all too sadly, cover for undoing our democratic electoral process. Shame on Acosta and all of his many biased media hacks selling themselves as legitimate reporters, analysts and commentators. The lack of credibility for the new media is a logical response to the biased behavior so clearly evidenced by Acosta’s nonsense. Even Americans who do not support Trump should be appalled by rampant media bias.

By Johan Galtung*

This column has advocated a 1-2-6-20 solution: 1 Palestine fully recognized by Israel; a 2-state solution with borders according to international law; in a 6-state Middle Eastern community of Israel and Arab neighbors, in a 20+-state community, also with their neighbors.

The 2-state solution could be a confederation with Israeli cantons on the West Bank, and Palestinian cantons in Israel’s northwest.

The above is acceptable to Palestine, the Arab League and Iran. Not to Israel. Netanyahu wants expansion, secure borders and recognition. Impossible. With Trump’s help he expands further, leaving UNESCO, defying UN.

Except that Netanyahu and Trump are not going to be around forever.  They suffer from autism; Trump clinically, demanding total allegiance. Not one critical word about their America First! Israel First! policies.  Seeing the world from their bubbles, missing is reciprocity, the opposite of autism; taking in Other, not only taking Other on. Dialogue.

Yet, facts catch up with them and these are disturbing. Trump is not creating a great America, but an isolated America.  Netanyahu is not recreating a Genesis 15:18 Israel, but a non-viable Israel.

Israeli terrorists conquered and colonized. Yet let us be clear: Israel is not an apartheid state but “first- vs second-class citizens”. Nor is it a racist state; there are Jews and Arabs of all races. It is a “chosen people with promised land” state, claiming a divine mandate; out of touch with the post-Enlightenment rationality of our age.

The first non-viability point is an Arab minority becoming an Arab majority in Netanyahu’s Israel as “Jewish state for Jews only”. For that, Arabs would have to be expelled or that land detached for a smaller Israel, invoking heavier sanctions than Israel can withstand. USA can block UNSC, but not all bilateral diplomatic sanctions.

The second non-viability point is deeper. The Zionist concept–a good century ago–of a state for one nation only is non-viable.

Today people move in and out of everything, including Israel. Moreover, states as such are devolving, yielding to local autonomies from below, and to regionalization, globalization, from above.

There is a hard core Israel devoted not only to Genesis 15:18, but also to the belligerent Deuteronomy 20:10-20 and the geopolitical four tier model in Isaiah 2:1-4. And to the memory of the Jewish 5,000-strong brigade fighting heroically Nazi-Germany during WWII.[i]

Although there are also softer Israelis. Many of them, in USA, are parts to the escalating conflict between Israeli and diaspora Jews. Particularly women, given the choice of Orthodox Judaism for Israel; with women as second class citizens as witnessed at the Wailing Wall.

And there are empty Israelis: the Northwest whence the 780,000 Palestinians were driven out, the vast South.

Plus, under and above all that, the past, present and future filled with Palestinian resistance, the Intifadas, to get their land back. Still willing (PNC) to co-exist with a 4 June 1967 Israel. Netanyahu, helped by Trump, is escalating the expansion as Palestinians escalate their resistance. That struggle will never cease, making Israel a very viable battlefield and a non-viable country.

Given this, how do we arrive at a rational post-Netanyahu Israel?

By going back to the roots of the three Abrahamic religions, that lasting factor, but not the only one, in so much world belligerence.

Judaism shares monotheism with Islam, a good point of departure.

Christianity shares singularism-universalism with Islam, a very bad point of departure, excluding each other, with uneasy truces; now one dominating, now the other; here one dominating, there the other.

And Judaism shares a hierarchical, pyramidal view of geopolitics with Christianity, another bad point of departure, giving rise to the Judeo-Christianity legitimizing US exceptionalism and belligerence.

But the point here is the Judaism-Islam relation.

In principle, it opens for Jews living as they used to do, with people of The Book, believers in the kitab, all over in Muslim lands.  Including what Jews see as their Holy Land, much of the Middle East. So, why be so modest and go for only that little speck of land called Israel?  Why not leave 4 June 1967 Israel to hard core Zionists, they are there already, liberating the rest of the world from them?

In addition, simply reciprocate the Muslim tolerance of Jews, by living next to them, two monotheistic religions, based on divine revelations? Like they did for so many centuries under one Muslim dynasty after the other, the Omayyads, the Abassids, the Fatimids, the Ottomans–till the Zionists implanted the European nation-state idea in West Asia.

This would take much dialogue, and much and skillful negotiation.  For one thing, Jews may have to swallow the bitter pill of apologizing for the efforts to make it look as if they had been driven out of Arab-Muslim countries, concealing that they had benefited from an age-old tradition, back to the Prophet, building as he did, on their Prophets.

This policy has as little chance in today’s political reality as that reality has of becoming viable.  Exactly for that reason a vision of an alternative is needed, even indispensable. This is one effort.

We could go a step further: there are Christians in the area. Once the three celebrated a long-lasting Golden Age together; there is no law saying that golden ages can only happen in southern Spain. Even more likely in the Holy Land, with Jerusalem in the center with sacred spaces for all of them, of course not under Israeli “sovereignty”.

And sacred times for all of them, to be respected by the others.

The world wants messages of peace from these great, old faiths, not everlasting belligerence. That could emanate from Jerusalem, by highlighting the traditions of togetherness and tolerance rather than the opposite: the Abrahamic faiths betraying the human hope of peace.

The world is waiting. Time for this to happen is now.

About the author:
*Johan Galtung, a professor of peace studies, dr hc mult, is founder of TRANSCEND International and rector of TRANSCEND Peace University. Prof. Galtung has published more than 1500 articles and book chapters, over 470 Editorials for TRANSCEND Media Service, and more than 170 books on peace and related issues, of which more than 40 have been translated to other languages, including 50 Years – 100 Peace and Conflict Perspectives published by TRANSCEND University Press.

Note:
[i]. See Howard Blum: Ihr Leben in unserer Hand. Die Geschichte der Jüdischen Brigade im Zweiten Weltkrieg (München: Econ).

Last week, the World Congress of Tatars resolved to create its own national council, the Milli Shura, an institution that echoes the one Tatars set up exactly 100 years ago to unite the Muslim nations of the disintegrating Russian Empire and that ultimately became the basis for the formation of the Tatar Republic within the USSR.

Ayrat Fayzrakhmanov, the vice president of the World Forum of Tatar Youth, draws attention to this historical coincidence and argues that Tatars and especially Tatar officials and young people must make use of this new institution to prevent the Tatar nation from dying out (idelreal.org/a/28659105.html and business-gazeta.ru/article/353689).

The 1917 action was intended to create an extraterritorial autonomy that could unite the Muslim peoples of the Russian Empire and coexist with other forms of national autonomy, he writes. Its authority spread across the Muslim communities of the Volga, the Urals region and Siberia as well as in Moscow and Petrograd.

And the leaders of the 1917 Milli Shura boldly proclaimed that their goal was to create “a nation of ‘Turkic-Tatar Muslims’” who could take their destiny into their own hands both via this body and via meetings of Muslims from across the Empire. (For a discussion of the details of this movement, see Shafiqa Daulet’s Moscow and Kazan (Hudson, NH, 2003).)

The Tatars like other Turkic nations a century ago were forming themselves out of the common Muslim community, and the Milli Shura’s call for national cultural autonomy served, Fayzrakhmanov says, as the basis for the subsequent rise of Tatarstan as an autonomous republic within the Soviet Union

Indeed, at the very first meeting of this alternative legislature and government, delegates spoke of the need to create a territorial unit that later became known as “the state of Idel-Ural” with a capital in Kazan. The Bolsheviks reacted harshly, arresting the leaders and disarming the state’s soldiers; but they did not kill the idea by their action.

Indeed, the restoration of the name this past week shows that the same ideas which animated the Tatars and other Muslim peoples of the empire in 1917 continue to animate them a century later, the Tatar youth leader suggests.

Unfortunately, given how politically charged this term is, the leaders of the World Congress chose not to draw these links in public. But that doesn’t make them any less powerful. And here is why: Tatars then and now are animated by Gayaz Iskakhi’s pre-1914 novel that suggested they would disappear as a nation in 200 years if they did not struggle to survive.

If one uses Iskhaki’s time line, the Tatars have only about 80 years left. At a time when Moscow is moving to take more and more rights away from Tatarstan, even that period of time seems optimistic. But this line of argument represents a major sea change in opinion, one that may be the most important outcome of the World Congress.

There are two kinds of national movements in the world: the optimistic and the pessimistic. They are very different, and the latter is often more dramatic and radical. Optimistic nationalist movements are generally a reflection of a people that is growing demographically and expects to win by just continuing.

Central Asian movements at the end of Soviet times were of this type. As one of their leaders put it to the author of these lines 30 years ago, “we don’t have to win the battle of the streets: we are winning the battle of the bedroom.”

Pessimistic nationalist movements, in contrast, arise when members of a group conclude that if they do not act and soon, their nations will disappear. The national movements in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in Soviet times were precisely of that kind: Their peoples looked at the demographic and political situation and drew the direst conclusions.

That energized them and led to the movements which assumed a leading role in the demise of the USSR. For a long time, the Tatars of the Middle Volga were an optimistic national movement, despite Iskhaki’s prediction; now, they are becoming a pessimistic one – and that suggests the Milli Shura may play a larger and more radical role than anyone now expects.

Some in Moscow appear to appreciate that this is a serious threat to Moscow. One commentator has even suggested that Kazan by taking it has “declared war” on the Russian government (versia.ru/vlasti-tatarstana-gotovyatsya-k-vojne-s-federalnym-centrom).

Arakan Rohingya National Organsation (ARNO) strongly denounces and rejects the report, dated 6 August 2017, of the Maungdaw Investigation Commission headed by Myanmar Vice-President Myint Swe, a former military general. The report is “fundamentally flawed” and devoid of truth.

We are not surprised that the government’s commission denies “crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing” against the Rohingya people, where Myanmar military and security forces were the perpetrators.

We reiterate that the commission lacked independence and proper mandate; its members are not impartial or competent; it fails to provide adequate and effective protection for witnesses; and it has not given any consideration to the independent expert’s recommendations. The report neither provides accountability nor reconciliation but impunity. It, in fact, is a blatant disregard of the human rights of the victims.

Under international conventions and customary international law, the government of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has primary responsibility to protect the Rohingya population; to make accountable those responsible for acts of genocide, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing against them, and to ensure their right to effective remedy. But the commission and its report is a ploy by the Myanmar government to prevent an independent international investigation to deliver justice, truth and full reparations for the victims.

The UN Fact-Finding mission is credible alternative to highly flawed and bias Maungdaw Investigation Commission’s report and is crucial for accountability efforts. The defenceless Rohingyas should not face discrimination or violence because of their ethnic background or religious belief.

We, therefore, urge upon the international community, including the powerful countries and Myanmar’s neighbours, to reject the Maungdaw Investigation Commission’s report and put concerted pressure on the stubborn Myanmar authorities to fully cooperate with the UN mandated Fact-Finding Mission into the human rights situation in Arakan/Rakhine State, and to provide it with free and unfettered access to all the areas to which they are seeking access.

By Marcia Christoff-Kurapovna*

“Switzerland will have the last word,” wrote Victor Hugo in the late 19th century. “It possesses one of the most perfect forms of government in the world.” A contemporary of his, Frederick Kuenzli, a scholar of the Swiss Army, boasted: “No purer type of Republican ideals, no more fixed and devoted adherence to those ideals can be found in all the world than in Switzerland.”

On many levels, there is reason to believe that, indeed, Switzerland remains a unique oasis of rationality and intelligence in the ocean-wide bloodbath that is contemporary Western fiscal and social self-sabotage. On the other hand, there is the Swiss National Bank — the central bank — that oddly appears to be encouraging the same monetary policy dance-with-death that has tripped up the country’s masochistic neighbors. How viable yet is the Swiss element in that which we still admire as the nation of Switzerland? First the good news:

Direct democracy is alive and kicking: No mere opinion poll, the power and vibrancy of the referendum — one that can be launched by any local who can gather 100,000 signatures in support — constitutes one of the most impressive displays of true citizen-republicanism that there is. There is an upcoming vote on the Swiss Sovereign Money Initiative — a movement to obstruct financial speculation; recent referendums that were voted into law include a phasing out of nuclear energy to be replaced by renewables, and easier naturalization of third-generation immigrants.

Cash is still very much king and carrying around personal debt is a social blackmark. In fact, the love of cash has a counter-cultural dimension to it as an anti-State, anti-globalist, anti-anti-privacy gesture intended to underscore the Swiss love of freedom. The Swiss will use huge denominations (the 1000-franc note, for example) like they use pocket change to pay for everything from monthly utility bills to buying a sandwich. Professionals regularly will pay their cantonal taxes by showing up at municipal offices and unrolling a wad of bank notes. No one bats an eye. The country’s long tradition of banking secrecy has instilled a love for the untraceable privacy conferred by cash notes and coins. In fact, so serious is the Swiss demand for privacy that the federal government appoints its own public data security officer and banking secrecy remains fully in force for domestic customers,

And then there is Switzerland the banking superpower. More than any other banking system anywhere, Swiss bankers have developed the art of learning from history. From its historic position at the crossroads of and as a safe-haven from the experience of world war, hyperinflation and political upheavals, Switzerland has cultivated that legendary conservatism which ensures that Swiss bank investments still are of the highest quality. The high standard of liquidity remains in place.

However,

The creeping signs of The State are settling upon the Alpine paradise. It may come as no surprise that a central bank figures at the center of this. The strange case of the Swiss National Bank (SNB) is a phenomenon to be followed closely, if Switzerland is not to lose sight of what it means, and has always meant, to be Swiss.

At first glance, the SNB appears to be the last of the bankers’ banks. The SNB is not powerful. It is not owned by the Swiss government. It is completely independent, as expressed in Article 6 of the National Bank Act, which explicitly prohibits the bank from seeking or accepting instruction from federal authorities. Instead, the SNB has the legal status of a special-statute joint-stock company. Under Article 11, it is not allowed to acquire government bonds from new issues and monetary policy is not bankrolled by the SNB as a central bank. The SNB has private shareholders so it must report earnings like a regular company. (The Swiss Federal Government owns no shares in the bank). It has almost 640 billion francs in its currency reserves; the cantons together own 45%; a further 15% is owned by cantonal banks and the remaining 40% by private individuals and companies. But as good as all of that sounds:

Money printing fever has hit: When the SNB turned a record-setting loss into a massive profit in 2016, it was the result of the bank’s vast portfolio of U.S. stocks amounting to some $60 billion, with investments in such companies as Google parent-company Alphabet; Apple and Facebook, among others. The bank reported profits of 24 billion Swiss francs (23.4 billion USD for 2016), one of its best years ever. (This was a major turn-around from 2015, when it recorded its biggest loss in history of 23 billion francs).

Yet James Grant, of the legendary Wall Street newsletter Grant’s Interest Rate Observer, is having none of it. As he told the Swiss economic journal Finanz und Wirtschaft last August, this buying spree consists of francs created from “the thin alpine air where the Swiss money grows”. He adds: “All this is done with a tab of a computer key. And then the SNB calls its friendly broker – I guess UBS – and buys the ears off of the US stock exchange. All of it with money that didn’t exist. That too, is something a little bit new.”

Then there are negative interest rates…The Swiss National Bank imposed sub-zero rates in early 2015, prompting many lenders including UBS Group and Credit Suisse Group to pass on the burden – it is not known how much– to cash-rich clients like asset managers and big companies. Now, cash hoarding is going like never before, a nice problem for the SNB’s “monetary policy” if there ever was one, effectively nullifying the effect of negative rates. Swiss insurance companies are having a field day as customers pile in to buy policies to protect their cash from theft or damage given the increasing demand for cash storage.

To top it all off, the Swiss are selling off their gold. Gold holdings had been a standard par excellence of the Swiss. Over the course of the 20^th century, the Swiss accumulated large gold reserves and ran a steady current account surplus. This placed the SNB in opposition with the International Monetary Fund, which Switzerland did not join until 1992. Thereafter, membership meant weaning the Swiss franc off its gold standard and in 1999, Switzerland became the last industrial nation to go off that standard. At that time, the Swiss National Bank held some 2,600 tons of gold, representing about 41% of its total currency reserves. By the end of 2008 its gold holdings had dwindled to just 21% of reserves. And as of August this year, they had fallen to just 7.9%. The raw tonnage has fallen over that time to just 1,040 tons, a 60% decline from 1999. The highly-anticipated Swiss Gold Initiative of 2014 — an initiative that called for the Swiss central bank to hold at least 20% of its assets in gold, prohibit selling any gold in future, and bring back all its gold reserves to Switzerland — failed.

It is to Switzerland many in the West turn today for a model of solid fiscal conservatism, love of individual privacy, subordinate central government and true community-based freedom, as if a beacon light in a trans-Atlantic fog of warfare and welfare state indoctrination. One hopes the SNB and its adherents understand the folly of sabotaging the great success that their country has enjoyed by sticking to one fundamental principle above all: that of keeping Switzerland Swiss—and with apologies to no one.

About the author:
*Marcia Christoff-Kurapovna contributed feature pieces and op-eds on Swiss and Liechtenstein banking issues for The Wall Street Journal Europe while based in Vienna, Austria; she also authored a column, ‘Swiss Watch.’ She currently lives in Washington, DC where she is a speech and op-ed writer to foreign dignitaries.

Source:
This article was published by the MISES Institute

A computer program has been developed that is able to correctly identify depressed individuals from their social media photos 70% of the time, according to a study involving 166 users of a popular social media app. In comparison, previous research has shown that general practitioners can make a correct unassisted diagnosis of depression 42% of the time. The research is published in the open access journal EPJ Data Science.

Dr Christopher Danforth, study co-author from the University of Vermont, said: “Our analysis of user accounts from a popular social media app revealed that photos posted by people diagnosed with depression tended to be darker in color, received more comments from the community, were more likely to contain faces and less likely to have a filter applied. When they did select a filter they were more likely to use the filter that converted color images to black and white. People diagnosed with depression also posted at a higher frequency compared to non-depressed individuals.”

Dr Danforth added: “With an increasing share of our social interactions happening online, the potential for algorithmic identification of early-warning signs for a host of mental and physical illnesses is enormous. Imagine an app you can install on your phone that pings your doctor for a check-up when your behavior changes for the worse, potentially before you even realize there is a problem.”

The researchers used the computer program to analyse 43,950 photos, following recruitment of 166 users of a popular social media app, including 71 people that had a clinical diagnosis of depression. The program scoured the photos for details that were associated with healthy and depressed individuals. This information was then used to see if the program could predict who would go on to be diagnosed with depression by only looking at photos that were posted before their diagnosis.

Dr Andrew Reece, study co-author from Harvard University, said: “Although we had a relatively small sample size, we were able to reliably observe differences in features of social media posts between depressed and non-depressed individuals. Importantly, we also demonstrate that the markers of depression can be observed in posts made prior to the person receiving a clinical diagnosis of depression.”

The study is limited by the generalization of the term “depression” in the data collection process. Depression is a complex, multifaceted illness and is frequently present with other health conditions. Future research should seek to address the reliability of the computer model against more finely tuned definitions of depressive disorders, according to the researchers. Furthermore, a total of 509 participants were initially recruited, but 43% were dropped from the study because they did not consent to sharing their social media data. This raises concerns around data privacy which will need to be addressed should a similar model be developed for widespread clinical use.

Are two languages at a time too much for the mind? Caregivers and teachers should know that infants growing up bilingual have the learning capacities to make sense of the complexities of two languages just by listening. In a new study, an international team of researchers, including those from Princeton University, report that bilingual infants as young as 20 months of age efficiently and accurately process two languages.

The study, published Aug. 7 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that infants can differentiate between words in different languages. “By 20 months, bilingual babies already know something about the differences between words in their two languages,” said Casey Lew-Williams, an assistant professor of psychology and co-director of the Princeton Baby Lab, where researchers study how babies and young children learn to see, talk and understand the world. He is also the co-author of the paper.

“They do not think that ‘dog’ and ‘chien’ [French] are just two versions of the same thing,” Lew-Williams said. “They implicitly know that these words belong to different languages.”

To determine infants’ ability to monitor and control language, the researchers showed 24 French-English bilingual infants and 24 adults in Montreal pairs of photographs of familiar objects. Participants heard simple sentences in either a single language (“Look! Find the dog!”) or a mix of two languages (“Look! Find the chien!”). In another experiment, they heard a language switch that crossed sentences (“That one looks fun! Le chien!”). These types of language switches, called code switches, are regularly heard by children in bilingual communities.

The researchers then used eye-tracking measures, such as how long an infant’s or an adult’s eyes remained fixed to a photograph after hearing a sentence, and pupil dilation. Pupil diameter is an involuntary response to how hard the brain is “working,” and is used as an indirect measure of cognitive effort.

The researchers tested bilingual adults as a control group and used the same photographs and eye-tracking procedure as tested on bilingual infants to examine whether these language-control mechanisms were the same across a bilingual speaker’s life.

They found that bilingual infants and adults incurred a processing “cost” when hearing switched-language sentences and, at the moment of the language switch, their pupils dilated. However, this switch cost was reduced or eliminated when the switch was from the non-dominant to the dominant language, and when the language switch crossed sentences.

“We identified convergent behavioral and physiological markers of there being a ‘cost’ associated with language switching,” Lew-Williams said. Rather than indicating barriers to comprehension, the study “shows an efficient processing strategy where there is an activation and prioritization of the currently heard language,” Lew-Williams said.

The similar results in both the infant and adult subjects also imply that “bilinguals across the lifespan have important similarities in how they process their languages,” Lew-Williams said.

“We have known for a long time that the language currently being spoken between two bilingual interlocutors — the base language — is more active than the language not being spoken, even when mixed speech is possible,” said François Grosjean, professor emeritus of psycholinguistics at Neuchâtel University in Switzerland, who is familiar with the research but was not involved with the study.

“This creates a preference for the base language when listening, and hence processing a code-switch can take a bit more time, but momentarily,” added Grosjean. “When language switches occur frequently, or are situated at [sentence] boundaries, or listeners expect them, then no extra processing time is needed. The current study shows that many of these aspects are true in young bilingual infants, and this is quite remarkable.”

“These findings advance our understanding of bilingual language use in exciting ways — both in toddlers in the initial stages of acquisition and in the proficient bilingual adult,” said Janet Werker, a professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia, who was not involved with the research. She noted that the findings may have implications for optimal teaching in bilingual settings. “One of the most obvious implications of these results is that we needn’t be concerned that children growing up bilingual will confuse their two languages. Indeed, rather than being confused as to which language to expect, the results indicate that even toddlers naturally activate the vocabulary of the language that is being used in any particular setting.”

A bilingual advantage?

Lew-Williams suggests that this study not only confirms that bilingual infants monitor and control their languages while listening to the simplest of sentences, but also provides a likely explanation of why bilinguals show cognitive advantages across the lifespan. Children and adults who have dual-language proficiency have been observed to perform better in “tasks that require switching or the inhibiting of a previously learned response,” Lew-Williams said.

“Researchers used to think this ‘bilingual advantage’ was from bilinguals’ practice dealing with their two languages while speaking,” Lew-Williams said. “We believe that everyday listening experience in infancy — this back-and-forth processing of two languages — is likely to give rise to the cognitive advantages that have been documented in both bilingual children and adults.”

While talking to the media in the town of Ribadumia in Pontevedra, where he was starting his summer holidays, Spain’s Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy described the recent economic data as “excellent”.

Rajoy expressed great satisfaction with the unemployment figures corresponding to the month of July and predicted that, “if we keep going like this”, it will be possible to achieve the figure of 20 million people in employment a year ahead of the original forecast.

“I believe that, if we keep going like this – but a prudent approach is always advisable – we can achieve it in 2019,” he said.

Rajoy added that this “excellent data” follows on from all the other positive results achieved during the year. He went on to say that the increase in permanent employment and in contracts for people “who have been unemployed for a long time,” together with the growing number of young people finding a job, which “is four times higher than the rest,” are especially “significant”.

(Civil.Ge) — “Nine years after the war, Russia still does not fulfill the August 12, 2008 ceasefire agreement and continues the policy of occupation and factual annexation of the [two] integral regions of a sovereign state through complete disregard of the fundamental principles of international law,” the Georgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement released on the occasion of ninth anniversary of the 2008 Russo-Georgian war.

“[This is] manifested in illegal integration of Georgia’s Abkhazia and Tskhinvali regions into the Russian military-political and social-economic system, militarization of the occupied regions and reinforcement of the occupation line with barbed wires and various artificial barriers,” the Ministry added.

The Foreign Ministry also said that the situation involving “illegal detentions and abductions of people across the occupation line and the restriction of access of locals to their households and of freedom of movement,” was further complicated by “the closure of the four so called crossing points in the direction of Abkhazia.”

“Ethnic discrimination of Georgians living on the occupied territories and the infringement of their fundamental rights still continues,” the Georgian MFA noted. “While hundreds of thousands of people have been expelled from their homes, the Russian occupation regime treats the indigenous Georgian population remaining in Abkhazia and Tskhinvali regions as foreigners in their own land.”

“After restricting the Georgian language instruction in the schools of Gali District, the same will be done in the Georgian schools of Tskhinvali Region,” the Ministry also said, adding that “the Russian occupation regime tries to isolate the people living in Abkhazia and Tskhinvali regions and deliberately hampers their humanitarian contacts with the rest of Georgia and the world.”

Despite Russia’s “provocative actions,” however, the Government of Georgia remains firmly committed to its peaceful conflict resolution policy. “Unlike the Russian Federation, Georgia is faithfully fulfilling the August 12, 2008 ceasefire agreement and tries to achieve tangible results through constructive engagement in the Geneva International Discussions.”

“Moreover,” the MFA went on, “while the Russian Federation systematically exercises power in the occupied regions, Georgia has, on numerous occasions, including at legislative and executive levels, committed to the non-use of force.” “As for the barbed wires and the artificial barriers on the occupation line, we counter them through the intensive policy of confidence building between the populations divided by the war.”

“It is exactly because of this rational and peaceful policy, that despite these difficult challenges, the Government of Georgia managed to succeed in its irreversible democratic and economic development, secure stability and peace on the Tbilisi-controlled territory, and progress along the path of its European and Euro-Atlantic aspirations,” it said and also expressed gratitude to “partner countries and international organizations for the firm support to its sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

“The Georgian side calls upon the international community to channel consolidated efforts in addressing the grave consequences of the August 2008 war and the peaceful resolution of the Russian-Georgian conflict,” the Georgian MFA said.

In its statement, the Foreign Ministry also expressed condolences to the families of soldiers and civilians killed in the 2008 Russo-Georgian war.

On August 7, politicians from the opposition United National Movement visited the military cemetery at Mukhatgverdi in Tbilisi outskirts to pay tribute to Georgian soldiers fallen in the war, while the European Georgia representatives traveled to village Ergneti, close to the occupation line, just south of Tskhinvali.

Russia will speed up work on reducing its dependence on U.S. payment systems and the dollar as a settling currency in response to U.S. sanctions, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said on Monday.

Quoted by Reuters, Ryabkov said that “we will of course intensify work related to import substitution, reduction of dependence on U.S. payment systems, on the dollar as a settling currency and so on. It is becoming a vital need.” The reason for that is that “the US is using its dominating role in the monetary and financial system to impose pressure on foreign business, including Russian companies.”

As a reminder, three years ago the MasterCard payment system stopped serving clients of seven Russian banks without warning after Washington imposed its first set of sanctions on Moscow in 2014. In response, the Russian government ordered the creation of a national payment system. With the support of the country’s banking system, the Mir charge card was introduced in 2015, although there is no information on what its adoption rate has been in the following years.

As we discussed previously, as part of the latest set of Russian sanctions the US has imposed new restrictions on the Russian banking and energy sectors: the ban targets already sanctioned Russian firms, limiting the financing period for them to 14 and 60 days. Additionally, the new law will punish individuals for investing more than $5 million a year or $1 million at a time in Russian energy export pipeline projects or providing such enterprises with services, technology or information support, a provision that has drawn strong condemnation from Washington’s European allies.

US energy companies criticized the tightening of already existing sanctions as damaging for business. At the same time, the European Union expressed concerns the new penalties may undermine the bloc’s energy security. European Commission head Jean-Claude Juncker pledged to prepare an “adequate” response and “within days” if the measure hurt the interests of European companies. So far Europe has to elaborate on what, if any, retaliation to the sanctions it will unveil.

French carmaker Renault announced Monday that it has signed a joint venture agreement with the Industrial Development & Renovation Organization of Iran (IDRO) and Parto Negin Naseh Co, an importer of Renault products in Iran. Media is reporting that the deal could be worth around 660 million euros

The proposed joint venture company, of which Renault will be the majority shareholder, though with a first period of joint control with IDRO and Parto Negin Naseh Co, will include an engineering and purchasing center to support the development of local suppliers as well as a plant with an initial production capacity of 150,000 vehicles a year, supplementing Groupe Renault’s existing capacity of 200,000 vehicles a year in the country.

According to Renault, in first-half 2017, Groupe Renault sales in Iran doubled year-on-year, for a total 68,365 vehicles and a 9.7% market share.

The first vehicles to be produced at the plant will be new Symbol and new Duster.

In addition to the vehicle plant announced in September 2016, an engine plant is also planned with a capacity of 150,000 units a year.

The manufacturing facilities will be in Saveh, located 120 km from Tehran. They will be owned and operated by the joint venture company.

The agreements also provide for the development of an exclusive Renault distribution network, in addition to the existing network of NEGIN Khodro.

“We are happy to sign this agreement with IDRO and Parto Negin Naseh Co. In a rapidly expanding Iranian market, it was vital to implement plants, engineering and purchasing centre. This joint venture will enable an acceleration of our growth in this country” said Thierry Bollore, Member of Groupe Renault Executive Committee and Chief Competitive Officer.

“The development of a commercial network specific to our brand will reinforce Groupe Renault’s position in Iran. The signing of this new joint venture reinforces the strategic choices we have made in Iran and will open new perspectives in a 2 million vehicle market projected in 2020”, said Stefan Mueller, Member of Groupe Renault Executive Committee and Chief Performance Officer.

Entry into force and finalization of the transaction remains subject to a number of conditions precedents, including regulatory approvals, formation of the new company and preparation of the industrial assets for the project. The parties expect completion to take place on or around October 30, 2017.

North Korea has criticized the new round of UN restrictions against it, promising to respond with “righteous action” and hinting that the US mainland cannot consider itself safe, North Korean state media reported.

Sanctions approved by all 15 members of the UN Security Council on Saturday outraged North Korea, which for years has refused to negotiate its nuclear program, instead accusing the US and its allies of aggression.

Pyongyang has promised to use “righteous action” in response, although without elaborating, North Korea’s KCNA news agency reported, as cited by Reuters.

“It’s a wild idea to think the DPRK will be shaken and change its position due to this kind of new sanctions formulated by hostile forces,” AP cited the agency.

North Korea reiterated its previous claims that the US mainland is vulnerable, as it had earlier said that its missiles can hit the whole of the US.

“There is no bigger mistake than the United States believing that its land is safe across the ocean,” KCNA said.

Later on Monday at the ASEAN meeting in the Philippines, North Korea issued a statement saying it is ready to give Washington a “severe lesson” with its strategic nuclear force, should the US resort to military action against it. Pyongyang also said its nuclear program is not subject to negotiation.

The statement, attributed to Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho, called the sanctions “fabricated” and warned there would be “strong follow-up measures,” Reuters reports.

Russia wants all sides of the Korean crisis to refrain from military action and seek a diplomatic solution. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov called on all parties “to show maximum restraint to avoid the projection of military power on the Korean Peninsula and immediately start seeking a political and diplomatic resolution to the problems of the peninsula, including its denuclearization.” Lavrov was quoted by the Foreign Ministry after he met his North Korean counterpart, Ri Yong-ho, on the sidelines of the ASEAN summit in Manila, the Philippines, on Sunday.

Beijing supported this, with its Foreign Ministry calling for restraint and positive efforts to resolve the crisis, according to Reuters.

Both Moscow and Beijing put forward a joint “double freezing” initiative, suggesting that North Korea suspend missile and nuclear tests while the US and its allies halt military exercises in the region. However, similar proposals have previously been rejected by Washington.

On Saturday, the UN unanimously approved a seventh round of sanctions against North Korea over its nuclear and missile tests. The measures target the North’s key revenue sources – the export of coal, iron, and iron ore among other economic restrictions.

An abnormal season of intense glacial melt in 2002 triggered multiple distinct changes in the physical and biological characteristics of Antarctica’s McMurdo Dry Valleys over the ensuing decade, new research led by the University of Colorado Boulder shows.

The findings suggest that even abrupt, short-lived climate events can cause long-term alterations in polar regions that unfold over the span of several years and subsequently change the overall trajectory of an ecosystem.

The new research appears in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution.

The McMurdo Dry Valleys (MDV) are the largest ice-free region of Antarctica and are considered a polar desert environment due to their low humidity and scarce precipitation. Now in its 25th year, the National Science Foundation’s McMurdo Dry Valleys Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) has provided a continuous multi-decade record of atmospheric and ecological data at the MDV research site.

Between 1987 and 2000, the MDV region experienced a period of cooling, during which mean summer temperatures steadily declined while solar radiation gradually increased. The trend resulted in expected changes to most biological variables, including decreased streamflow and increased thickness of permanent ice covers on lakes.

In 2002, however, the MDV experienced an abnormally warm and sunny summer season, triggering the greatest amount of glacial meltwater since 1969. The abrupt event prompted numerous changes in the lakes, streams and soils of the MDV over the following decade.

“This flood year was the pivot point,” said Michael Gooseff, a fellow in CU Boulder’s Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR) and the lead investigator for the MDV LTER project. “Prior to that, all physical and biological indicators had been moving in the same direction.”

Instead of a tightly-correlated change, however, biological responses to the 2002 season varied and, in some cases, lagged behind by years. For example, the researchers found that one previously declining dominant soil species increased slowly following the flood year while a rarer species responded more positively to the moisture pulse and saw population increases carry over into subsequent summers.

“Long-term records are essential to understand how and when communities of organisms might respond together or as individual species when facing abrupt changes in their environment,” said Ross Virginia, director of the Institute of Arctic Studies at Dartmouth College and a co-author of the study. “As climate changes in the dry valleys, these kinds of biotic responses and interactions will shape its future biodiversity.”

Paul Cutler, the NSF program officer for the two LTERs in Antarctica, noted that these results underscore the value of gathering data over decadal time scales.

“The natural world operates in non-linear ways and on many different time scales, from daily cycles to processes that take centuries,” said Cutler. “The LTERs are instrumental in measuring and deciphering these complexities in order to inform basic understanding of ecosystem functioning and to refine predictions of the future of critical ecosystems, particularly in areas like the Dry Valleys, which maintain an ancient, but potentially delicate ecological balance.”

The findings suggest that significant transformations of Antarctic ecosystems are underway now and will continue to be affected by future climate events.

“A single extreme melt season led to an asynchronous pattern,” said Gooseff, who is also an associate professor in CU Boulder’s Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering. “It may be the abrupt, short-lived events that occur in response to climate change that cause long-term changes to physical and biological aspects of polar ecosystems.”

By Carl Schreck

(RFE/RL) — Russia has already convicted a blogger for videos mocking religion, including one showing him playing Pokemon Go in an Orthodox church.

Now it’s convicted another Internet user for reposting satirical cartoons about Jesus Christ.

In the latest case highlighting restrictions on religious speech in Russia, a court in the Black Sea resort of Sochi found a man guilty of offending religious believers’ feelings by reposting several cartoons lampooning Christianity’s central figure.

Viktor Nochevnov, 32, was fined 50,000 rubles ($832) following his August 2 conviction for the images, which he posted on his page on the popular Russian social-networking site VKontakte, according to a copy of the verdict obtained by RFE/RL.

Nochevnov posted the cartoons over the course of nearly a year beginning in October 2014. He has since deleted the images, according to his lawyer, and they could not be immediately located.

But according to the verdict issued by the Sochi court, they included one of Jesus working out in a gym and another showing a crucified Jesus being carried on the cross with the caption “Let’s go!” — an apparent reference to the phrase Soviet cosmonaut Yury Gagarin uttered as he took off to become the first human in orbit in 1961.

Another cartoon showed Jesus dressed in a Nazi SS uniform with a caption playing on a traditional phrase spoken by Russian Orthodox believers on Easter.

Nochevnov could not be immediately reached for comment. But his lawyer said in a statement released by a rights group that the authorities in Sochi have stepped up prosecutions against nontraditional religious believers and others who don’t adhere to Russian Orthodoxy.

“Sochi authorities have recently donned the costumes of inquisitors and are leading a quiet battle for religious sterility,” lawyer Aleksander Popkov said in the statement.

Criminalizing Speech

Nochevnov was convicted under a controversial 2013 law that introduced up to three years in prison for those found guilty of public actions committed with the goal of insulting religious sensitivities.

Russian blogger Ruslan Sokolovsky was convicted under that same law in May, resulting in a 3 1/2-year suspended sentence in a case that drew condemnation from international rights groups.

Sokolovsky was arrested in September after posting a video showing him playing Pokemon Go in a Russian Orthodox church in Yekaterinburg. It was one of several videos that he was convicted for.

While he was not sent to prison, Sokolovsky was placed on an official government list of designated terrorists and extremists. His case prompted the veteran Russian journalist and television personality Vladimir Pozner to ask on state television whether atheism was now a criminal offense in Russia.

Aleksandr Verkhovsky, the head of the respected Moscow-based Sova Center, tells RFE/RL that convictions under the law on religious feelings are on the rise, and that almost all of the cases “are simply absurd.”

Verkhovsky, whose group tracks the use and abuse of antiextremism legislation in Russia, says that Nochevnov’s conviction in Sochi is based on “harmless jokes.”

“Of course, someone could have been offended,” he says, “but you can’t turn every potential insult into a criminal case.”

Nochevnov’s case comes amid a broad crackdown on online speech by Russian authorities in what is portrayed as an effort to combat extremism. Rights activists say that justification is often used to stamp out constitutionally protected speech.

In an online interview the same day as his conviction, Nochevnov said prosecutors tried to convince him to plead guilty but that he refused, saying he only reposted them on his personal social-media page and didn’t create them.

The Sochi court ordered Nochevnov not to leave the city until his conviction takes effect. It called his claim that he did not mean to offend anyone “farfetched” and that there was “no way he could not have known” that the cartoons would offend believers.

Nochevnov’s lawyer, Popkov, said he planned to appeal the verdict.